Saint Francis tops Damien, 41-37, behind Won's 12 points

Saint Francis' Matthew Nuumanaia elevates for a layup attempt against Damien. Tyler Guieb | Special to SL

MANOA — Blayne Won scored 12 points and grabbed nine rebounds to lead Saint Francis to a 41-37 win over Damien in an Interscholastic League of Honolulu Division II Boys Basketball second-round game Tuesday night.

The Saints won their fourth straight before a home crowd of about 200 spectators to improve to 4-2, while the Monarchs saw their two-game win streak snapped to fall to 4-2. Saint Francis avenged a 59-53 loss earlier this month.

"It's always redeeming beating any team," Saints' coach Sol Batoon said. "It's not an easy task because you're dealing with young kids and their emotions flicker from time to time and you don't know what kid comes to play on a given day and it goes back-and-forth; somedays they're motivated to do the right thing and some days they're confused about doing the right thing, so tonight we worked hard all week preparing for what we needed to do defensively and they all did the right thing."

Won shot 6 of 11 from the field and grabbed four of his rebounds on the offensive glass.

"Blayne means a lot to us," Batoon said. "Our whole offense is centered around Blayne Won — it's not centered around Matthew Nuumanaia or anyone else, it's around Blayne Won — because he's our strongest guy and he's our most consistent guy, so we go to him all the time and we try to get him a touch on every time we come down on offense."

Saint Francis never trailed in the game, but was never able to separate beyond seven points. Damien pulled within 34-32 late in the fourth quarter on a free throw by Kapi'ina King, but the Saint made five of their final eight free throws — including four by Nuumanaia, who scored six of his 10 points in the fourth quarter.

It was a low-scoring game for both teams. Damien, which averaged 55.7 points per game entering the contest shot just 27.8 percent (10 of 36) from the field, while Saint Francis, which averaged 54.4 points per game coming into Tuesday, shot 37.5 percent (15 of 40) from the field.

King led Damien with 13 points and seven rebounds. Jaylen Layco added 10 points and seven boards and Rocklen Mori 10 points with five rebounds.

Both teams are half a game behind division-leading Hawaii Baptist, which was idle Tuesday.

Reach Kalani Takase at [email protected].