H-W JUST HAS TOO MUCH COLLINS\Twins make winning another title look easy\HAR.-WEST. 77, MORNINGSIDE 56.

Byline: Eric Sondheimer Daily News Deputy Sports Editor 

For eight astonishing minutes of the third quarter Saturday morning at the Anaheim Arena, Harvard-Westlake High School's twin giants, Jason and Jarron Collins, looked like they should be wearing NBA uniforms.

They rammed home dunks, rejected shots, pulled down rebounds - they just dominated.

"You just give them the ball and get out of the way," teammate Alex Gelbard said. "I was in awe."

An eight-point halftime lead turned into a 22-point fourth-quarter cushion. In the end, Harvard-Westlake (26-2) came away with a 77-56 triumph over Morningside (20-9) to win its second straight Southern Section Division III-A boys' basketball championship.

In the third quarter, the 6-foot-10 Jarron Collins scored 11 of his 21 points and the 6-11 Jason Collins scored 10 his 20 points. Jarron finished with 17 rebounds and seven blocked shots. Jason had 13 rebounds and four blocked shots.

"We have confidence in our abilities as a team," Jarron said. "We believe in each other. We didn't have that confidence, that click in the first half. When we got it back, we had confidence we could score every time down."

Harvard-Westlake started fast, opening leads of 10-0 and 18-4. It helped that Morningside was assessed a technical foul before the game even started for showing up only eight minutes before tipoff because of a late bus.

But the Monarchs' quickness and trapping defense started to affect the Wolverines. In the second quarter, Harvard-Westlake was called for two five-second violations, a 10-second violation and a backcourt violation. The Wolverines had 16 first-half turnovers (27 for the game) and led only 33-25.

Then Harvard-Westlake coach Greg Hilliard made his halftime adjustments. He directed his players to start passing instead of dribbling the ball. He told them to attack instead of hesitating against the Morningside press.The twins began getting the ball inside, and the rout was on.

"It's a whole team fitting together," Hilliard said.

"Jason just tore them apart inside and we were able to solve the press," said guard Ryan Smiley, who contributed 15 points. "We put it all together and took off."

Last week in the semifinals, Harvard-Westlake led Duarte 33-25 at halftime, then spurted to a 60-38 lead after three quarters. On Saturday, it was a repeat performance, with the same identical score at halftime and after three quarters. Call it bizarre, but also call it twin terror.

"They (the twins) have the ability to take over any game when they choose to," Smiley said.

"You could see that emotion and desire to dominate that Jason and Jarron had," Gelbard said.

Until the twins arrived two years ago, Harvard-Westlake hadn't won a basketball championship in 25 years. In three seasons at the Studio City campus, the twins have led Harvard-Westlake to a 79-8 record. They didn't celebrate much Saturday, because now they want to win a state championship.

They open regional action Tuesday. The pairings will be announced today. Harvard-Westlake could be the No. 1 seed in Division III.

Is this the best Harvard-Westlake team since Collins brothers arrived?

"If we win the state championship, then I'll declare it," Smiley said.

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Harvard-Westlake's Jason Collins reacts after a dunk while teammate Leo DaCosta celebrates their Southern Section III-A win. Hans Gutknecht/Daily News Box Soccer Scores