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Sports

BOYS BASKETBALL: Colts Undone by Poor Start

El Camino falls behind by 16 in first half against Burlingame; late rally falls short in host Colts' 12-point loss to PAL Bay leader.

The Score: Burlingame 54, El Camino 42.

The Star: Burlingame High’s Kyle Shaffer, who stepped up when Rodrigo Puliceno was saddled with early foul trouble. Shaffer led all scorers with 17 points and had several key rebounds in the Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division game.

The Turning Point: After El Camino’s Elijah White cut the Panthers’ lead to five late in the third quarter, Burlingame’s Stephen Johnson drilled a 3-pointer just before the buzzer to give his team a 39-31 advantage and helped settle down the visitors going into the final period.

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The Quote: "You can’t play a first half like we did tonight against a team as good as Burlingame and hope to win.” – El Camino assistant coach Archie Junio.

What's Next? El Camino plays at Aragon on Friday at 7:45 p.m.

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The Bottom Line: The Colts put themselves into a huge hole in the first half, falling behind by as much as 16 points, and it turned out to be too deep to climb back out of. That El Camino did manage to come back to within five speaks volumes of how dangerous this team could be in the PAL tournament or Central Coast Section playoffs.

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Facing a must-win game to keep its slim hopes for a Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division title alive, the El Camino High boys basketball team made just one mistake on Wednesday night.

Unfortunately for the Colts, playing against league-leading Burlingame, one mistake was one too many.

El Camino came out flat in the first half at El Camino High and fell behind by as much as 16 points. It was a hole the Colts could never recover from as Burlingame rolled to a 54-42 victory.

"You can’t play a first half like we did tonight against a team as good as Burlingame and hope to win,” said El Camino assistant coach Archie Junio, who along with the other assistants for the Colts filled in for absent head coach Anthony Khoo. “In the first half, we came out flat. No energy at all.”

Elijah White – who led the Colts with 16 points – scored seven points in the first half, single-handedly keeping El Camino (12-9, 3-4 PAL Bay) within range of Burlingame (18-3, 7-0) in the first 16 minutes. White, along with Anthony Knight sparked a huge third-quarter rally that saw the Colts pull to within five points late in the period.

Knight scored all 10 of his points in the second half, attacking the basket while White scored from the outside. It was a 3-pointer by White with 49 seconds left in the period that pulled the Colts to 36-31.

“We played our game in the second half,” Junio said. “We played fast and scored on the transition.”

Adding to El Camino’s frustrations was its failure to take advantage when Burlingame big man Rodrigo Puliceno spent most of the game in foul trouble – picking up two fouls in the first period and his third in the first minute of the third quarter – and finished the game with just nine points.

Kyle Shaffer filled the void for the Panthers, scoring a game-high 17 points in the interior, while Stephen Johnson poured in 13 points from the outside.

“That is always our goal,” Panthers coach Jeff Dowd said. “Establish the inside and set up our outside shooting off of it.”

Burlingame, No. 2 in , had taken a 31-18 lead into halftime, only to watch the Colts rally back behind pressing on defense and attacking the basket on offense. But Johnson’s period-ending three and Shaffer’s 11 second-half points proved to be too much to overcome.

And while Puliceno was hit with his third foul early in the third period, he still contributed five points and played solid defense. He even managed to not pick up his fourth foul despite playing all but the last minute of the second half.

“We almost took him out of the game after the third foul,” Dowd said. “But he did a great job keeping his composure and kept playing hard.”

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Burlingame 54, El Camino 42

B – 16 15 8 15 -- 54

EC -- 7 11 13 11 – 42

B: Bailey 1 0-0 2, Feinberg 1 1-2 4, Otus 1 0-0 2, Grotz 2 0-0 5, Johnson 4 2-2 13, Puliceno 2 5-8 9, Loew 1 0-0 2, Shaffer 7 3-4 17. Totals 19 11-16 54.

EC: San 1 0-0 3, White 5 3-3 16, Knight 5 0-0 10, Marthiessen 1 1-1 3, Santos Jr. 1 0-0 2, Lee 1 0-1 3, Tuason 1 0-0 2, Smith 1 0-0 3. Totals 16 4-5 42.

3-point goals: B: Johnson 3, Grotz, Feinberg. EC: White 3, San, Lee, Smith.

Records: Burlingame 18-3, 7-0 PAL Bay. El Camino 12-9, 3-4.

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