SAN JOSE — Bellarmine advanced to the CCS Open Division Championship for a fourth consecutive year, and the way the Bells did it on Wednesday may have been their most impressive yet.
They entered battle against Riordan, a team they had lost to twice in the regular season, without starting center Constantijn Cole, his likely replacement in Ryan Kiachian and senior guard Cole Troedson, all dealing with ankle and foot injuries.
Even with those absences, the third-seeded Bells managed to overcome a team that been a difficult matchup in the regular season, playing the Crusaders tight the whole way and winning 68-61 in overtime behind a career-high 21 points from Ian Elam and tremendous play by Josh Wolf-Bloom, who was seeing his first-ever varsity action.
“He’s really gutty and savvy,” head coach Patrick Schneider said. “With the injuries to our frontcourt, we had to improvise a little bit, and this was a great matchup for his skillset.”
Wolf-Bloom had started on Bellarmine’s 24-0 JV team throughout the year and was called up to practice with the varsity team in the playoffs, but he never would have expected to see the floor outside of the final minutes of a blowout. With the Bells stretched thin in the post with injuries to Cole and Kiachian, and even third-stringer Scott Nelson unavailable, Wolf-Bloom got on the floor in the second quarter and made an immediate impact.
“I thought I might play a little bit after Ryan got hurt in practice, but not anything like I did,” he said. “My teammates were helping me out any time I wasn’t sure where to be on the floor.”
He scored off one of Quinn Denker’s six assists and would go on to collect six points and five rebounds on the night as Bellarmine (20-6) managed to run the shot clock down repeatedly, then get a perfect look after slowing the up-tempo Crusaders down again and again.
“The last time we played them, we shot 27 percent because we took 27 percent shots,” Schneider said. “We found better shots tonight, and I was so proud of our pace.”
That patience was at its peak in the second quarter, where the Bells shot an unbelievable 9-of-10 to take a 26-24 lead into the half. Bryce Monroe scored 10 of his game-high 27 in the quarter for Riordan (18-8), but after his three-point play to put the second-seeded Crusaders up 17-11, the Bells went on a 9-2 run, taking the lead on a Gio Saso three. They’d go into the half on top after Denker scored as the shot clock wound down in the final moments of the quarter.
With big plays from Wolf-Bloom and baskets by reserves Nick Grassman and Josiah Ajiake, it opened up opportunities in the second half for Elam, who would go on to score eight in the fourth quarter and another six in overtime. He tied the game twice on identical plays in the final minutes, taking a pass through the middle first from Denker to tie it at 54 and then from Kiran Kruse to tie it at 56 after Monroe had put Riordan back in front on a pull-up jumper with 25 seconds left.
“Riordan was trying to switch screens really hard to guard Quinn and Kiran, so I was just trying to slip through them and knife to the basket,” Elam said as he celebrated his 17th birthday with his biggest offensive game of the year. “They were trying to stay on them, so I was open under the rim.”
Monroe got one last chance after a Crusader timeout with 4.1 seconds left, but his one-hand floater bounced off the front of the rim as time expired and sent the game to overtime.
The extra period had far less drama than the rest of the game, as Wolf-Bloom got the scoring started with a pair of free throws and Elam put the Bells up six with back-to-back baskets. Riordan wouldn’t score until Monroe hit two free throws with 1:07 left in overtime, and Elam put things away off a pass from Ridley Ruth with 30 seconds left.
Ruth scored just three points after chipping in eight during Friday’s win over St. Ignatius, but he sure made them count. The Crusaders had taken a 40-36 lead with an 8-0 run in the third quarter, but Ruth’s and-1 with 48.2 seconds left in the third got the Bells back within one. Monroe would feed Dominic Wilson underneath to make it 46-42 early in the fourth, but Bellarmine would score the next eight points, tying it at 46 on a pair of Kruse free throws and going in front on baskets by Elam and Denker.
Je’Lani Clark scored 11 for Riordan, including a layup to tie it at 50 with 2:36 left, and Wilson scored 10 off the bench. After Denker scored the last of his 10 points to put Bellarmine back in front, Wilson tied it at 52 with 1:55 remaining in regulation.
Kruse scored 15 for the Bells and joined Jake Wojcik as the only player to reach three Open Division championship games as a starter.
“We’ve established a culture of success,” Kruse said. “We set really high standards and we don’t let ourselves underachieved. That’s a legacy that we get from Angelo (Athens), from Jake, from Kendall (Stubblefield) and from all the guys that have come through and set the precedent for us.”
Athens was the point guard on the first two Bellarmine teams to reach the finals, while Wojcik started on all three and Stubblefield started at center in the last two. Even with four starters graduating from last year’s team, the Bells are right back where they’ve been each of the prior three seasons, and they did it with a win that harkened back to the game that started this streak. In 2016, they shocked Serra, 53-51, after losing both meetings with the Padres in the regular season.
“That was the game I thought a lot of coming here,” Schneider said. “Against Serra three years ago, we kept attacking downhill and couldn’t worry about size and speed. I thought we did a great job of attacking downhill tonight.”
Downhill attacks were especially important as the Bells went just 3-for-14 on 3-pointers.
“After the first quarter, we took great shots,” Schneider said after qualifying for a 19th section championship game. “In the first half we had eight shots inside of four feet.”
Bellarmine is 14-4 in section championship games, all under Schneider. Friday will mark their 11th appearance in a championship game in the last 12 years, and it’ll be their eighth time playing at the Leavey Center at Santa Clara University.
