SAN FRANCISCO — Of the 42 teams that entered the North Coast Section boys basketball playoffs as double-digit seeds, just one has advanced to the semifinals: Stuart Hall.
Jackson Jung knocked down five 3-pointers and scored a game-high 15 points as the Knights outlasted 15th-seeded St. Joseph Notre Dame on Saturday night in an NCS Division 4 quarterfinal at Kezar Pavilion, 45-41.
“Just a classic Stuart Hall game,” head coach Charley Johnson said. “A lot of grit. Wasn’t pretty. It got tight at moments.”
The Knights never trailed in the second half, opening the fourth quarter with an 11-3 run to take a 43-32 lead on Owen Akel’s 3-pointer with 2:38 remaining. Stuart Hall (17-11) scored just once over the final two minutes, but played tight defense to hold on down the stretch.
“In these do-or-die situations, we come together,” said Jung.
Stuart Hall finished just fourth in the BCL West, but opened the playoffs with a convincing 63-33 win at seventh-seeded Middletown and followed it up with another victory on Saturday.
“The way we’ve practiced the last week or so, we’ve come together,” Johnson commented.
Faced with a Pilots team that’s played 2-3 zone defense for years, Stuart Hall lived on the perimeter, knocking down nine 3-pointers. Jung made five while Akel and Brandon Lum each sank a pair.
“Once we see a zone team and hit shots, we start getting our confidence under us,” Jung explained.
St. Joseph Notre Dame (5-18) came out on fire, hitting five straight shots to open the game with a 13-6 lead, but the Knights tied the game at 13 on Lum’s deep 3-pointer and went into the second down by just two after an Adrian Calderon floater in the lane.
The Knights allowed just three points in the entire second quarter, using an 11-0 run to take a 24-17 lead behind two 3-pointers by Jung and one by Akel. They led by six at the break and withstood a Pilots charge in the third quarter as the visitors cut the lead to 28-27 behind back-to-back baskets by Nebiyu Teklemariam, who finished with 11 points.
While many of his peers opted to leave SJND for basketball academies or “prep schools” with questionable-at-best academic reputations, Teklemariam was a four-year program player with the Pilots, spending the last three years on the varsity team.
“He stayed with it for all four years and came in every morning at 6:30,” longtime head coach Don Lippi said. “I live across the street and would open up the gym for him every morning.”
Ethan Harland led a late charge for SJND, hitting a trio of 3-pointers in the final two-and-a-half minutes. He scored a team-high 14 for the visitors, all in the second half.
The combination of star players opting to transfer, a difficult non-league schedule and a West Alameda County Conference full of talent left the Pilots with an unsightly 4-17 regular season record. But when the NCS waived the typical .500 record requirements in response to a multitude of COVID-related game cancellations, SJND not only made the playoffs but picked up a stunning win over Arcata before running out of steam on Saturday night.
“That was the best we’ve played,” Lippi said of Wednesday’s first-round victory. “It made me realize how wonderful winning is. This year, we didn’t have that, and it gets hard. When you do win, you really appreciate it.”
