OIA Boys Basketball
Kipapa drains 6 3-pointers, pours in 29 to carry Trojans past Sabers


  



Fri, Jan 13, 2023 @ Mililani


Final 1 2 3 4  
Campbell (12-1, 25-6) 11 11161452
Mililani (12-1, 18-5) 13 12 15 1858
J. Kipapa 29 pts  6 3pm  5/6 FTs
M. Carreira 17 pts  7/8 FTs

MILILANI — There was no stopping Jayden Kipapa Friday night. 

The senior guard scored a career-high 29 points to carry No. 6 Mililani to a 58-52 win over No. 9 Campbell before a crowd of about 400 fans at the Trojans' home gymnasium. 

Outside of an early deficit in the opening quarter, the Trojans (8-0) never trailed against the Sabers (7-1) in the meeting of undefeated teams atop the Oahu Interscholastic Association's Western Division. 

Mililani assumed sole possession of first place atop the OIA Division I West standings by shooting the lights out Friday, especially from 3-point range. 

The Trojans shot 10 of 22 from distance, including a 6-for-9 effort from Kipapa, who scored 20 of his team's 33 second-half points. Kipapa was particularly hot in the third quarter, when accounted for all but two of Mililani's 15 points in the stanza. 

"Jayden's that type of player. You know, when he gets hot and starts to feet it, he can hit those shots, so we were lucky; we needed every bit of it in order to beat these guys," Trojans coach Garrett Gabriel said. 

Kipapa shot 64.3 percent (9 of 14) from the field. He drained a number of 3s from beyond 24 feet — much to the chagrin of Campbell coach Wyatt Tau. 

"That Kipapa kid — I told our kids, if he's gonna beat us, he's gotta beat us at the NBA range and I mean, that's what he did. We were right there (defensively), but hey, give him credit," Tau said. 

Kipapa topped his previous career-high of 20 points against Nanakuli on Jan. 14, 2022. 

Through Mililani's first seven games this season, Kipapa was averaging 10.3 points per game — which ranked second on the team behind sophomore Roman Gabriel (11.0 ppg). 

"You know, all year (Kipapa) was quiet," Tau said. "I thought it was (Gabriel) was the one and because (Kipapa's) been quiet, I thought he was injured, but tonight — no, he was not injured; He was ready to play, he was ready to go."

The Sabers, conversely, struggled shooting the ball, particularly from 3-point range. They were just 2 of 13 (15.4 percent) beyond the arc and 17 of 46 (36.9 percent) from the field. 

Both Tau and Gabriel agreed that Friday's matchup provided the first test of the regular season for their respective teams. 

"Yes, probably the best test, but like I tell our kids, every game is a test and we just gotta show up and play how we've been playing all year, but you know what, credit to Mililani, they stuck in there, we were going shot for shot, it was just that theirs fell in," Tau said. "Short end of the stick, but our guys kept playing."

Mizah Carreira scored 13 of his team-high 17 points after halftime. Rondell Blenman-Villarreal tallied 15 points and Josh Ellis chipped in seven off the bench for the Sabers, who entered the game averaging 72 points per game. 

Campbell held an 11-8 lead at about the two-minute mark of the first quarter after a steal and coast-to-coast layup by Rylan Sotelo. However, Kipapa answered with a deep 3-pointer to spur an 11-0 run that culminated with another Kipapa trey to give his team a 19-11 advantage with 5:30 until the half. 

The Sabers regained some momentum going into the intermission with an 11-3 run, but still trailed the Trojans, 25-22, at the break. 

As the teams went to their respective locker rooms for halftime, two Mililani players had an exchange of words near the team bench and had to be separated by the coaching staff. 

"We got some fiery guys," Gabriel responded. "I told them that's unacceptable, but these kids are very passionate and we play a lot of basketball and the expectations are high and now we're holding each other accountable, but we gotta do it in the appropriate way by being positive and in control."

The Trojans responded with a 9-4 run to start the second half. Kipapa's 17-foot jumper with 4:52 left in the third quarter gave Mililani its largest lead of the night at 35-26. 

The Sabers did not go quietly, however. They pulled to within 47-46 with 4:05 to play on an Ellis finish at the rim, but Kipapa retaliated with his sixth triple of the night to make it a four-point game. 

Campbell stayed within striking distance in the final minute of play. Blenman-Villarreal put back his own miss to cut it to 55-52 with 40 seconds left. 

The Trojans closed it out at the free-throw line, where Lecedric Brown made both ends of a pivotal one-and-one bonus to make it a two-possession game and put it out of reach. They were his only points of the game. 

Gabriel credited Brown, a sophomore role player, for coming through in the clutch. 

"He's been awesome, he's our shutdown guy like Jackson Mayo was last year and we told him that ‘it doesn't matter how many points you score, but if you can hold their big guns to minimum' — we always set what we want as a goal — and he's done that for most the season, so I'm proud of him," Gabriel said. 

Mililani made 12 of 15 from the charity stripe, including 11 of 13 after halftime. It shot 48.6 percent (18 of 37) from the field. 

"Campbell is big, long, tough, so we knew we had to be efficient and that's difficult against a team like them because they're long, they can play defense, they can post you up and they shoot the 3, so we just tried to keep it within reason and I thought we played the first half actually pretty good, we weren't down or even and in the second half we pulled it out," Gabriel said. 

The Trojans can clinch at least a second-place finish in the D1 West — and more importantly a first-round bye in the upcoming OIA tournament — with a win in either of their final two regular season games at Kapolei (5-2) Wednesday and against Radford (3-3) next Saturday. 

"They've got a good team, we just gotta go back to the drawing board and get ready for Aiea (Saturday), our senior night, so hopefully we can rebound from there and go," Tau said. 

Tip-off between the Sabers and Na Alii (3-3) is scheduled for 7 p.m. 

Campbell concludes the regular season against No. 8 Leilehua (7-1) Wednesday. 



Reach Kalani Takase at [email protected].




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