PASADENA — Eli Essa and Ernest Baskerville have a friendship that goes back more than 25 years, back to when Essa was Baskerville's Ameteur Athletic Union coach on a youth boys' basketball team in the San Fernando Valley.
When Baskerville became the basketball coach at Providence two seasons ago, he asked Essa to be one of his assistant coaches. And when Baskerville took over the Pasadena La Salle job prior to this season, he again asked Essa to assist him. Both times Essa respectfully declined.
Essa, a former boys' coach at Bellarmine-Jefferson, did, however, agree to be an assistant this season for the Guards under Coach Julian Andrade.
Andrade had a business event he had to attend to when his Bell-Jeff team took on La Salle in a Martin Luther King Showdown game, leaving Essa in charge of the Guards. That left Baskerville to match wits with his former coach in the opening game of the event Monday morning at La Salle.