No. 13 Sierra Canyon blitzes No. 17 Lone Peak, 73-45

Remy Martin drives to the hoop against Lone Peak. The junior guard scored a game-high 22 points to lead the Trailblazers in a blowout win. Steve Erler | Special to SL

An opportunistic defense and good ball movement on offense propelled No. 13 Sierra Canyon past No. 17 Lone Peak, 73-45 in the Iolani Classic semifinals on Monday night.

The Trailblazers (Chatsworth, Calif.) advance to the title the game and will play La Lumiere (La Porte, Ind.) at 8 p.m. on Tuesday night while Lone Peak (Highland, Utah) will play Fairfax (Los Angeles) for third place at 6:30.

Sierra Canyon's starters combined for 62 of the team's 73 points led by Remy Martin, who scored 23 on 8-of-11 shooting. He also added five assists and four steals. Cody Riley added 15 points and 10 rebounds, Adam Seiko contributed 10, who went 2-for-3 from the 3-point line.

"We wanted to come out and as a leader I wanted give that energy and when I'm on the court, that's my job. When we do that it's hard to stop us because we are a fast team and we play defense," said Martin.

The Trailblazers used a suffocating defense that forced nine Knights turnovers in the quarter to jump out to a 13-2 lead but the Knights cut it within nine, 17-8 after Nate Harkness' 3-pointer. Lone Peak committed 17 turnovers for the game.

Coach Ty Nichols, who was upset with several calls, received a technical foul with 1:55 remaining. From there, the Trailblazers went on a 8-1 run to take a 25-9 lead after the first quarter.

"What stopped us is we got in foul trouble and it took our flow away. That's when they made that run. They did a good job continuing that in the second half. We had to call a timeout and refocus," said Nichols.

Sierra Canyon made it, 32-10 after Devearl Ramsey's layup and Lone Peak called a full timeout at the 6:28 mark. The Knights would outscore the Trailblazers, 14-6 to trail, 38-24 at halftime.

The Knights started chipping away and eventually cut the deficit to nine, 44-35 after Harkness' putback, prompting Sierra Canyon to call a timeout at 5:02.

Following the timeout, the Trailblazers blew the game wide open and Martin's jumper before the buzzer sounded capped a 17-1 run to end the quarter. Sierra Canyon got 18 assists for the game as they moved the ball and worked it around on offense. Ramsey led the team with six assists.

"We went back to our seasonal theme— discipline on defense and one possession at a time. We must play disciplined defense and we were able to do that and go back to our press and they turned it over a couple times and it helped," said Nichols.

Sierra Canyon got the crowd on its feet as Ramsey threw the ball off the backboard and Riley slammed it in to start the fourth quarter. Steven Ashworth broke the Knights' scoring drought with a 3-pointer. Both teams were able to put in reserves to finish the game.

"You can see the heartbeat of our group during that run. Guys were sharing the ball and working hard on defense and no one cared who scored," said Nichols.

Frank Jackson, a Duke commit, scored a team-high 16 points for Lone Peak, but was hounded all night by multiple defenders. Max Brenchley came off the bench to add 10 points.

Reach Brandon Ching at [email protected].