By Laura Amato
The shots just stopped falling.
The Christ the King boys basketball team couldn’t buy a bucket down the stretch, hitting a cold streak at the most inopportune time en route to a 78-67 season-ending loss to Stepinac in the CHSAA ‘AA’ quarterfinals Sunday.
The Royals were outscored 44-26 in the final 16 minutes of play and connected on just three field goals in the fourth quarter.
“The shots didn’t fall today,” Christ the King coach Joe Arbitello said. “We had a chance in the first half, but we had 14 turnovers. We just didn’t take advantage.”
The loss was disappointing, but the performance stung a bit more after Christ the King opened the game well. The Royals jumped out to a 41-34 advantage over Stepinac at the break, sparked by the strong presence of Kofi Cockburn in the post.
The sophomore standout racked up a game-high 13 points and seven rebounds in the first 16 minutes of action and Stepinac struggled to find an answer for his physicality on the block early on.
That changed in the second half.
The Crusaders brought defensive pressure from every angle in the third quarter and started hitting shots they’d been missing in the opening minutes of the postseason tilt. The Royals, meanwhile, didn’t – shooting just 30 percent in the fourth quarter.
“We just didn’t make shots,” Arbitello said. “We turned it over way too much and we had them on the ropes. We started to play like sophomores a little bit.”
Christ the King made it a four-point game with 2:30 left on the clock, when Cockburn hauled in an offensive rebound and drained the putback, but it was too little too late for the squad. Stepinac answered by going a perfect 10-for-10 from the line in the final 2:12 and Christ the King didn’t help its own cause down the stretch.
The Royals forced passes throughout much of the second half and settled for low-percentage shots, unable to get any penetration into the lane in the waning minutes of play. By the final whistle, Christ the King turned the ball over a whopping 23 times and Stepinac took advantage, notching 28 points of the miscues.
It’s the end of an era for the Royals who will see standout point guard Jose Alvarado graduate at the end of the year. The Georgia Tech-bound star finished with 20 points, nine rebounds and five assists in his final high school game, but it was a far earlier end than he or his teammates hoped for.
He’s a great player,” Arbitello said. “I’d pick him every year. He’s a winner. He’s just a guy who understands the game, following the great tradition of these other players who have come through Christ the King.”
Chris the King returns a good chunk of its roster next season, but it was difficult for the squad to look at the future quite yet. Arbitello called the returning players a “silver lining,” but for right now, the Royals are still disappointed, frustrated that they couldn’t connect when it mattered most.
