ONTARIO >> Julien Gomez did everything he could to bring La Mirada its first CIF Southern Section boys basketball championship.

But the sophomore and the rest of his teammates could never get over the hump, falling to top seed Rancho Christian 63-55 in Saturday’s Division 2A championship game at Colony High School.

It was Rancho Christian’s third trip to the CIF-SS finals and second championship since 2016, and it handed La Mirada (24-9) its second straight loss in a title game.

La Mirada has never won a section title, though it did win the CIF State Division II championship in 2015.

Rancho Christian (22-10) and La Mirada will be in the CIF State regional playoffs that start Tuesday. The pairings will be released Sunday.

Gomez scored a game-high 32 points, and although he was disappointed by the loss he knew that Rancho Christian was the real deal.

Rancho Christian’s Kevin Patton Jr., a transfer from Arizona who is committed to play at the University of San Diego, scored a team-high 18 points with 10 rebounds and Rodney Brown Jr., who is headed to Cal, finished with 16 points.

“Last year and this year was extremely difficult to take,” Gomez said of the finals losses. “It’s not easy to win games in the playoffs. But I do feel like we played a better team in the finals this year than last year. That was an Open Division (type) of a team. I can accept that. I love playing against great competition.”

Gomez tried to will the Matadores back from an 11-point halftime deficit, scoring all 13 of the Mats’ third quarter points to cut the Eagles’ lead to two points midway through the third quarter. And after the Eagles surged ahead again in the fourth, Gomez got hot again, and had a game-tying 3-point shot that rimmed out with four minutes left, and that was it.

“If I make that it’s a 0-0 game,” Gomez said. “That was a big one.”

Rancho Christian responded with seven straight points to go up 59-51 with a 1:30 left, and would hold on.

“We’re a third quarter team, so we weren’t panicking at halftime,” La Mirada coach Randy Oronoz said. “We were just trying to make some adjustments. We had a couple shots that didn’t drop, but credit to them, they hit some big shots when they needed to.”

Rancho Christian coach Ray Barefield was impressed with La Mirada’s grit.

“You have to give credit to their coach (Oronoz), he does a tremendous job and I was watching a lot of film, sometimes two times a day,” Barefield said. “Gomez is a special kid, if he’s on, some nights, it’s tough. He has such poise. But I thought our guys did well and responded when they had to.”

Patton and Brown, it seemed, were too much for the Spartans whenever the game got close.

“We knew they were going to come out with energy (in the second half), but we stuck together as a team and executed,” Patton said.

Brown was impressed with Gomez, but he knew their team effort would win out.

“I thought we came together as a team when they made their runs,” Brown said. “They kind of have one man, and for us, it’s all of us.”

The Eagles finished the half strong, taking their biggest lead, 38-27, on Patton’s coast-to-coast breakaway layup.

Gomez, who scored a game-high 12 first-half points, came out aggressive to begin the third quarter, getting to the foul line on three straight possessions, the final a three-point play to cut the Eagles’ lead to 38-32.

Gomez wasn’t done, scoring 11 straight points for the Mats, including right-handed and left-handed layup to bring the Mats within two points, 40-38.

But Brown stopped the bleeding with a 3-pointer and Patton hit a jumper for a quick 5-0 run that pushed the Eagles’ lead back to 45-38, and they kept surging to take a 49-40 lead to the fourth quarter. Gomez scored all 13 of the Matadores’ points in the third quarter.

Bailey Chambers and Kollen Murphy each had eight points for Rancho Christian and La Mirada didn’t have a second player in double figures. Sean Cervantes finished with seven points and Athan Sierra had six.