SACRAMENTO — If anyone knows how to help shooters feel comfortable when things aren’t going well, it’s Damien coach Mike LeDuc, who produced two of the Southern Section’s best scorers in Tracy Murray and Casey Jacobsen during his Glendora days.
So when Zaire Rasshan was only two of nine from three-point range at halftime on Friday night in the state Division I championship game, the message and mentality was keep shooting.
“I told him to start making them,” LeDuc said.
“I knew they were going to fall,” Rasshan.
He made a three to start the third quarter, launching a 10-0 surge that Folsom never recovered from. Damien came away with a 58-55 victory at Golden 1 Center, becoming the fifth straight team from the Southern Section Open Division to drop down to Division I and come away as state champion.
Rasshan finished with 18 points, including five threes. His three with 1:05 left moved Damien to an eight-point lead. Elijah Smith had 18 points and four assists. Eli Garner scored 15 points and had 13 rebounds. The only other player to score for Damien was Cameron Murray with seven points. He’s the nephew of Tracy Murray.
Throughout the fourth quarter, the Spartans (32-7) kept finding open players with near-perfect execution on offense.
“Their level of execution was on another level from anyone we’ve played,” Folsom coach Mike Wall said.
Joven Dulay and Parks Weaver each scored 16 points for Folsom, which fell behind 57-47 with 39 seconds left after two Smith free throws. Damien outrebounded Folsom 32-21 and had an 11-2 edge in offensive rebounds and took 30 threes to Folsom’s 18.
LeDuc, who has been coaching since 1979-80, said of the Spartans, “I really do believe this team, more than any other team I’ve coached, has been overachieving.”
The Spartans lacked height this season but got all five players on the court to rebound as a group, helping overcome any disadvantages. And Smith, as the point guard, rose up in the postseason.
“This run we’ve had, this guy has been ridiculously incredible,” LeDuc said of Smith.
As for the execution in the fourth quarter, LeDuc said, “We run a lot of plays. Basketball is a real simple game. It’s a game of repetition and if you do it over and over, you expect it to be done perfectly.”
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