OAKLAND, Calif. The Head-Royce boys junior varsity basketball team never trailed Friday. The Jayhawks held El Cerrito JV to 30 percent shooting and forced 19 turnovers in a 57-31 win that improved their record to 2-0.
Head-Royce scored the game's first eight points. Makaio Popp opened with a 3-pointer, PJ Nappali followed with a basket and Azaan Zaka hit a 3-pointer on a Nappali assist for an 8-0 lead. El Cerrito JV stayed close for a stretch. Two straight baskets off Head-Royce turnovers cut the deficit to 15-11, the nearest the visitors came all game. The Jayhawks answered with six straight points, including two baskets from Zaka, to go up 21-11.
The game turned after an El Cerrito JV second-chance basket made it 21-13. Head-Royce followed with a 10-0 run. Popp scored, John Wheeler hit a 3-pointer and LoRyan Boyette-Tindall made a free throw. Boyette-Tindall then turned two El Cerrito JV turnovers into back-to-back baskets, the second on a feed from Zaka, for a 31-13 lead.
Nappali then took over. With Head-Royce ahead 33-17, he scored eight straight points on a second-chance basket off a Popp assist, two more field goals and two free throws, pushing the lead to 41-17. El Cerrito JV got no closer than 19 points the rest of the way. Zaka closed the game by scoring eight of the Jayhawks' last nine points, and Kian Patel's free throw was the only other point in a 7-0 run that took the lead from 48-29 to 55-29. Zaka's basket on a Patel assist made the final 57-31, Head-Royce's biggest lead of the game.
Nappali led all scorers with 19 points on 7-of-9 shooting from the field and 5-of-8 from the free-throw line, and he added three rebounds and two assists. Zaka scored 17 points on 6-of-10 shooting, made his only 3-point attempt and went 4-for-4 at the line. Boyette-Tindall finished with seven points, a team-high four steals and two assists. Wheeler had six points and three steals, and Popp had five points, a team-high four assists and four rebounds. Patel came off the bench to grab a team-high five rebounds and add three steals.
Head-Royce shot 52.6 percent (20-for-38) from the field and went 14-for-22 at the free-throw line. El Cerrito JV finished 12-for-40 from the field, 2-for-14 from 3-point range and 5-for-18 at the line. The Jayhawks totaled 14 steals and 11 assists and outrebounded the visitors 25-23, though El Cerrito JV had nine offensive rebounds to Head-Royce's four. Head-Royce committed 14 turnovers, and El Cerrito JV turned them into eight points. The starters scored 54 of the Jayhawks' 57 points.
Head-Royce (2-0) has won two straight and returns home to host Antioch JV on Saturday, Dec. 13.
