Westlake Washes Out in Beverly Hills, 68-47

The basketball court at Beverly Hills High sits on top of a swimming pool, which would figure to give a team nicknamed the Dolphins an edge.

And at times in Friday night’s Beverly Hills tournament game against Westlake, it appeared the Palisades Dolphins could have walked on water or done just about anything else they wanted.

What they did was run past Westlake, the tournament’s top-seeded team, scoring a 68-47 victory to advance to tonight’s championship final against Beverly Hills, which defeated St. Bernard, 56-51, in Friday’s other semifinal.

In other tournament action Friday, Thousand Oaks routed North Torrance, 91-58, and will meet Saugus, a 56-52 winner over Torrance, for the consolation championship today at 3:30 p.m.

Westlake (3-1), which plays St. Bernard in today’s 7 p.m. third-place game, made a game of it for a half against Palisades (5-1), but the Dolphins’ Paul Garrett, a 6-9 junior center, took over in the third period.

Westlake trailed 30-26 at halftime and tied the game at 30 early in the third quarter, but the Dolphins went on a 15-2 run, getting eight points from Garrett--six of them following offensive rebounds. Palisades settled for a 45-36 lead after three periods.

It got worse for Westlake in the fourth quarter, as the Dolphins’ advantage ballooned to 58-40 before they went into a four-corners offense to kill off the remaining 3:40.

Garrett finished with 14 points and 12 rebounds, outplaying Westlake’s 6-8 center, Dave Heckmann, who had 10 points and four rebounds.

“I thought we had a pretty big edge there,” said Palisades Coach Jerry Marvin, in his 25th year with the Dolphins.

Actually, Palisades had a big edge almost everywhere. The Dolphins got 14 points and six rebounds from forward Jeff Bronner, and 13 and 11 points, respectively, from guards Kenny Wood and James Dudley.

Heckmann, who had all 10 of his points in the first half, was limited to two shots in the second half, both coming in the final three minutes.

Paul Keenan, Westlake’s All-Marmonte League forward, also was ineffective, scoring five points while hitting just two of six shots.