No one was surprised when local basketball stars Jovani Ruff and Ryann Bennett took over CIF postseason games and carried their teams to victory. That’s because they’d been doing it all year.
It didn’t look like Bennett had brought her A-game when St. Anthony took on Moreno Valley in the CIF Southern Section Girls’ Basketball Division 2AA championship in February at Azusa Pacific University. The Saints trailed by nine points with 11 minutes left, and Bennett hadn’t scored in the first half. But the senior point guard scored all of her 14 points in the second half, and finished with a game-high five assists to lead St. Anthony to victory.
Bennett is the youngest daughter of St. Anthony coach Ray Bennett, and he said that he always trusts Ryann to do the right thing with the ball in her hands.
“It’s an advantage when you have a point guard who sees the game and thinks the way that you (as a coach) think, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be grooming this one since the fourth grade,” Ray said. “We have a lot of trust because there’s been a lot of car rides where we’ve discussed X’s and O’s so her basketball IQ is second to none, as far as I’m concerned.”
Ruff is also a player that has the belief of his coaches and teammates, and the Long Beach Poly junior made them proud at the end of the Division 2A boys’ basketball semifinal at Ron Palmer Pavilion. The junior guard hit a thrilling go-ahead 3-pointer with 47 seconds left to beat Corona Del Mar.
“I would put him up there with anybody,” Poly coach Shelton Diggs said of Ruff. “He’s very, very polished but he’s also not a ballhog. He’s going to make the right play and people don’t realize how good he is defensively as well.”
