Through much of the season, senior guard Kelvin Cortez-Harvey has performed a virtual solo act for St. Edward.
Help arrived Friday night in the Class 2A Northridge Regional championship game. When it did, it came in the form of a thundering herd.
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The 5-foot-11 Cortez-Harvey scored a game-high 25 points and the Green Wave wiped out an early 13-point deficit with a dominant second half for a 68-43 victory.
“We’ve had a lot of ups and downs this season,” Cortez-Harvey said. “It’s what I love about this team. We never give up.”
Fourth-seeded St. Edward (15-15) overcame shooting 30 percent (7-for-23) in the first half with a 39-13 charge over the final 13:30 to trample top-seeded Northridge (22-6).
“We knew the shots were eventually going to start falling,” Cortez-Harvey said. “And we just kept putting more pressure on, and it got going.
“It gives us more momentum when you’re scoring and also playing defense.”
The lightning-quick Cortez-Harvey scored 17 in the second half, and his teammates kept pace to earn a 7 p.m. Wednesday matchup in the Guerin Sectional against DePaul Prep.
Steve Poremba finished with 12 points, AJ Franklin nine, and Will Gaston and Dylan Mlinarich had seven each for St. Edward.
“I think our offense was just a mess in the first half,” Franklin said. “We organized it at halftime, and it helped in the second half.”
Trailing 14-1 after six minutes, St. Edward clawed back within 25-19 by halftime and then put it all together.
At halftime, coach PJ White found inspiration in how St. Edward’s girls team rallied from a 29-15 halftime deficit Monday to make the state finals.
“I said, ‘Look what happened to our girls,’ ” White said. “They stuck in there, they came back and they started hitting their shots. That’s kind of what we did.”
Franklin began breaking down Northridge’s matchup zone by hitting a shot near the top of the key, then followed with a 3-pointer. Two minutes later, Poremba’s 3-pointer gave St. Edward a 32-30 lead, and Northridge didn’t lead again.
St. Edward went 10-for-15 in the third quarter and outscored Northridge 29-8 for a 48-33 lead.
“We moved the ball around and just found our rhythm,” Poremba said. “Nothing dropped in the first half.
“But we came back. We’ve come back a lot of times this year.”
Northridge committed 19 turnovers, including eight steals by Cortez-Harvey.
Cortez-Harvey scored the last eight points in the third quarter, including a 3-pointer at the buzzer. The Green Wave outscored Northridge 49-18 in the second half.
“I think conditioning played a great factor because if you looked at the end, we were getting faster as the game went on, and they were starting to slow down a little bit,” White said.
It didn’t hurt having a player like Cortez-Harvey, who always moves faster than everyone else anyway.
“He’s a special player,” White said. “I don’t want him to graduate.”
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