ALBANY, Calif. — No matter what the scoreboard said in Wednesday night’s NCS Division 4 First Round matchup with St. Mary’s-Albany, Lick-Wilmerding coach Eliot Smith’s message never changed.
“Be champions. You’ve got this. Believe.”
Smith’s unwavering positive attitude kept the Tigers afloat when they trailed by as much as 15, and his team fulfilled his words with an inspired comeback and a 63-59 overtime victory to keep their season alive.
“He preaches positivity and we all buy in,” said Colly Urdan, whose layup at the buzzer sent the game to overtime. “We’ve been down 17, 20 points and still come back. Overtime wasn’t new for us.”
Ninth-seeded Lick-Wilmerding (17-9) faced a 25-10 deficit in the second quarter and entered the fourth down by 12, but closed regulation on a 10-2 run to force the extra period. Jace Borkholder hit his lone shot of the game with 39 seconds left to make it a 56-54 game, and rather than play the foul game, the Tigers went for the steal. Kevin Guevarra picked off a pass with 11 seconds left in the game, freed it up to Borkholder and the senior found Urdan underneath for a layup at the buzzer.
“We were patient,” Guevarra said. “We knew they were gonna make the mistake, and we capitalized on that.”
The visitors never trailed in the extra period, taking a 57-56 lead on a Max Meyer free throw with 2:52 left and going up by three when Meyer fed Urdan inside. Guevarra scored on a feed from Urdan for a six-point advantage, and though St. Mary’s (9-7) got a Jaylen Jones layup and Blake Hudson free throw to get back within two, Urdan made one of two free throws and Meyer rebounded the second before drawing a foul and making one of his own to end the game.
“I’ve never had a team like this that just loved each other and had this character,” Smith said. “It was nice to see them overcome when they had so much adversity in front of them.”
Meyer picked up two fouls in the first four-and-a-half minutes and a third in the opening minute of the second quarter but scored a team-high 19, all in the final two quarters and the bonus period. His back-to-back threes launched the Tigers’ first assault, a 14-3 run to get within two to open the second half.
“When I saw that first one go in, it gave me a lot of confidence,” Meyer said. “We get going in the fastbreak and the ball starts going in there.”
The Panthers fired back with a 13-2 surge of their own, fueled by two of Theo Sully-McLaughlin’s five 3-pointers. His four-point play with 4:08 left in the quarter accounted for Meyer’s fourth foul and put the hosts up 34-26, and he connected again from deep for an 11-point lead. In all, he scored a game-high 22 points off the bench.
Hudson’s 3-pointer with 1:54 to go gave the eighth-seeded Panthers a 54-46 lead with 1:54 left and seemed to be the blow that would end Urdan and Borkholder’s careers, but Lick-Wilmerding united for one last push.
“I never doubted that it would happen,” said Urdan, who finished with 18 points, 10 rebounds and four assists. “But it feels great.”
Meyer hit his fifth and final 3-pointer to get within five, and though Kaveh Motamedi made a pair at the line with 1:17 to go to put St. Mary’s up seven again, Guevarra made two free throws with 1:02 left and the Tigers forced a turnover before Borkholder delivered his lone basket of the evening.
The valiant comeback meant the end of the season for the Panthers, who played just 16 games after a series of COVID-19 cancellations, including the decision by the TCAL to reduce the league schedule to a single round robin.
“We’ve got to get in the gym,” St. Mary's first-year head coach Del Curry said. “We can’t use that as an excuse though. We had enough of a lead and had control of the game. We had a couple miscues and a couple of untimely turnovers.”
With Milan Brooklyn-Kral out with food poisoning and Ahmad Wanzo attending to a family emergency, the Panthers saw just two seniors take the floor on Wednesday night. Motamedi picked up two early fouls but scored 11 in the second half and Jones finished with four points, nine rebounds and five assists.
“Jaylen is an awesome kid and a hard worker,” Curry said. “He’s very emotional and very spirited, but we were able to harness it in the right way.”
Jones and Hudson’s dominance on the glass added up in the first half, where the Panthers went on a 16-0 run to take their largest lead before Lick-Wilmerding got the final four points of the first half from Peter Drew.
“We don’t play a lot of zone, but we knew against this team, it would probably be a good idea,” Urdan said. “It just took a little adjusting to rebounding out of the 2-3 and we figured it out.”
The momentum generated by Drew’s baskets carried over to the second half, but it evaporated after the 13-2 St. Mary’s run. That sequence, Meyer’s four fouls and the Tigers’ position with just two timeouts in their arsenal could have spelled doom, but Smith never stopped pumping his team full of confidence.
“Guys were nervous because they were missing so many easy shots,” Smith said. “In our victories, we were always behind and we found a way to grind it out. We just barely had enough time.”
Guevarra finished with 14 points, six rebounds and three assists for the Tigers, who will visit top-seeded Marin Catholic (20-8) on Saturday. The Wildcats handled 16th seed Mt. Diablo, 82-57.
Hudson, a 6-foot-2 junior, finished with 14 points, 10 rebounds and five assists for the Panthers.
