The562’s coverage of Long Beach Poly Athletics for the 2025-26 school year is sponsored by Former Jackrabbits Wendell “WoWo” Moe, Jr. & Tyson Ruffins.
The562’s coverage of Long Beach Wilson Athletics is sponsored by Joel Bitonio, Class of 2009.
The last time Long Beach Poly and Wilson met on the hardwood it was an all-out sprint as the Jackrabbits pulled away late thanks to solid guard play down the stretch.
On Monday night, the Jackrabbits turned their defense into offense as they led wire-to-wire on their way to a 74-53 win against the Bruins in Ron Palmer Pavilion.
Poly (16-8, 6-1) has been testing some lineups out as they navigate their guard play after some injuries, but senior Jonas Oware made his presence felt from the opening tip as he scored 12 points in the opening half. While Oware was getting things going offensively – it was his defense that made a huge difference as he had five blocks in the first half.
“We had a game Saturday against Etiwanda that I feel like we should have won,” Oware mentioned about what gave him motivation. We kind of wanted to take that energy from that game and push it forward.”
Wilson (16-10, 4-6) only managed three baskets in the first quarter as they trailed Poly 23-6.
“Really stagnant offensively,” Wilson coach James Boykin said. “I was trying to get these guys to run more actions where we can get them going side to side. It’s too big to play half-core defense again or run our offense gets their house poor defense. They got that tall front line. So I was really trying to get us to get more actions in our system to where we had them on the move, side to side, brought them different acts and stuff like that. And the times where we were able to get shots were really knocking them down. And outside, that was really tough.”
With Nana Ofoegbu getting his teammates involved Poly continued to extend the lead as Jakobi Oware, Jett Von and Jonas scored in the second as the Jackrabbits took a 40-16 lead at halftime. Jonas paced Poly with a game-high 28 points.
“We played well in the second half against Etiwanda,” Poly coach Shelton Diggs said. “We played really well, so we wanted to carry it over from that second half starting the game off today like that. We got a little lead and we were able to hang out from there.”
Oware doubles his total in the third quarter with 12 points as the Jackrabbits extended their lead to 54-23 to put things out of reach for Wilson
With both team emptying their benches, Wilson started to make a run thanks to multiple threes from Noah Jaramillo scored a team-high nine points in the second half. Nehamiah Parris led Wilson with 16.
Poly will be on the road Wednesday when they visit Compton, while Wilson hosts Lakewood.
