Ellis Scores 28 as Mater Dei Beats Ygnacio Valley by 18 for State Title

OAKLAND — Santa Ana Mater Dei is a high school that seemingly has it all.

The Monarchs’ basketball team has been nationally ranked for the past five seasons. LeRon Ellis is considered the best prep center in the nation. If that’s not enough, the Monarchs’ cheerleaders recently won a national tournament in Florida.

All that’s been missing in the past five years under Coach Gary McKnight is a State championship trophy.

On Saturday night, the Monarchs took care of that, easily defeating Concord Ygnacio Valley, 69-51, in front of 14,211 fans at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

The Monarchs (31-1) became the sixth straight team from Southern California to win the Division I title, and they made it look easy in the process. Mater Dei opened a 15-6 lead in the first quarter and was never threatened.

Ygnacio Valley (28-7) was simply no match for the Monarchs. The Warriors had entered the Northern California regionals as an at-large team and recorded three straight upsets to reach the final.

But Ellis, who led all scorers with 28 points, was being perfectly candid when he said: “They weren’t the toughest team we’ve played this season.

“You get here, it’s the State championship and you’re going to get up for the game. But we’ve played tougher teams.”

Ellis did his best to stay interested in the second half by entertaining the large crowd with an assortment of dunks. He scored on a give-and-go play with guard Chris Patton with 4:30 remaining to push the Monarchs ahead, 59-41.

Later, he brought down the house with a reverse dunk that signaled the end for Ygnacio Valley. The 6-foot-11 senior made 13 of 21 field-goal attempts, blocked 4 shots and had 6 rebounds in his last prep game.

McKnight called the Monarchs’ first-half performance his team’s best half of basketball all season. The Monarchs made 68% of their shots (15 of 22) and had a 13-point lead at halftime.

“We cannot shoot any better than we did in the first half,” McKnight said. “I thought it was important to get an early lead against this team because they like to control the tempo.

“We tried to get the tempo up after trying to slow it down against Fairfax last week. This was a tremendous team effort. The passing was so crisp and we attacked and didn’t quit for a change.”

Junior forward Kevin Rembert also had an excellent game for the Monarchs, scoring 14 points and grabbing 11 rebounds. He missed only one shot attempt. Guard John Boyle added 11 points.

“That’s one heck of a fine basketball team,” said Jim Grace, Ygnacio Valley’s coach. “I’d hate to have to play them day in and day out.

“Ellis is much better than I thought going into the game. He was awesome and their defensive pressure was unrelenting.”

McKnight has run out of superlatives for his blue-chip center, but he dug deep and found one more.

“There’s no comparison between LeRon and anyone else around,” he said.