Punahou's Dayson Watanabe heads to the basket against Farrington. Greg Yamamoto | SL

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Sat, Dec 13, 2014 @ Moanalua

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Punahou

68

Farrington

50

Final	1	2	3	4
Punahou (24-5, 24-5)	21	10	15	22	68
Farrington (22-10, 22-10)	12	13	15	10	50

SEASON LEADERS

Jake Smith 15.4 ppg  62 3pm  69.7 FT%

Justin Kam 12.2 ppg  39 3pm  75.4 FT%

SALT LAKE — JB Kam made sure his presence was felt Saturday afternoon.

The senior swingman scored 11 of his game-high 25 points in the fourth quarter to lead Punahou to a 68-50 win over Farrington in the final day of the OIA-ILH Challenge at Moanalua High School.

Kam drained four 3-pointers – all coming after halftime — and grabbed a team-high nine rebounds as the Buffanblu won their third straight game and improved to 5-1 on the season.

"It was a great win," said Kam, who also notched one assist and a block. "Farrington is a good team and I just tried to contribute by knocking down my open shots and getting everyone involved."

The same teams met exactly one week ago, when the Governors won 61-53 on the final day of the James Alegre Invitational at Radford.

"They exposed a lot of our weaknesses on defense last week, so we went back, watched film and really worked on a lot of stuff," Punahou coach Darren Matsuda said. "I liked the improvement that we made on that end, (but) we still have a lot of work to do, especially on the offensive end, but eventually we improved a lot from last week to this week because everybody is going to get better, so we have to keep working."

This time around the Buffanblu worked in some new defensive sets, despite just a few days of practice between tournaments. They also beat Kalani (41-28) on Thursday and Moanalua (53-42) Friday.

"Today we just wanted to come out and play our hardest," said Buffanblu point guard Dayson Watanabe, who scored 14 points, seven assists and four rebounds. "Our coaches really wanted us to focus on defense and just tire them out."

Punahou used a 12-4 run to close out the first quarter and outscored Farrington 21 to 12 in the quarter.

"That helped a lot," Kam said. "We had the momentum going into the second quarter and I think that helped a lot."

However, Farrington used a 12-2 run midway through the second quarter to pull within a point at 25-24, but Punahou went on a  6-1 run to take a 31-25 lead into the intermission.

Jake Smith hit a running floater early in the fourth quarter to make the deficit 51-46, but Kam drained a pair of 3-pointers stretch the Buffanblu lead back to 11 and the Govs failed to score in the final four minutes.

Kam said his team's patience paid off in the final eight minutes.

"I think we just took our open shots, we didn't force any shots that we did in the other quarters and we played defense," said Kam, who was one of several Punahou players who sat out against Farrington last night.

Matsuda, for one, was pleased to see a healthy — and accurate — Kam back on the floor this week.

"He's worked hard on rounding his whole game, being able to take shots even when he's defended well and be able to change his game and not only be an outside shooter, but a guy who can post up and you notice he gets his points all within the offense — he doesn't force anything — so I didn't even know that he scored as much as he had because it's very quiet and that's the right way to play, so I'm very proud of him tonight," Matsuda said of Kam.

Smith scored a team-high 24 points and Ranan Mamiya added 16 to lead the Governors, who fell to 6-1 on the season.

Both teams will be participating in next week's Pete Smith Classic at Kalaheo. Punahou plays Castle and Farrington takes on Kamehameha II in Wednesday's opening round.