ETHAN KASSEL
Prep2Prep Senior Editor

February 28, 2022

SALINAS, Calif. — Menlo’s 63-58 victory over Palma in Saturday’s CCS Division IV Championship Game was a representation of the Knights’ season in a microcosm: A promising start, some hiccups down the stretch and an inspired rally to come out on top.

Sophomore Sam Reznik’s bank 3-pointer with 19 seconds remaining served as the go-ahead basket as the third-seeded Knights closed on an 11-0 run to win their eighth section title in program history.

Reznik, a transfer whose family moved from the Chicago area, joined the starting lineup along with Brooks Mead as first-year head coach Ben Batory shifted to a smaller lineup to fuel a nine-game winning streak.

“It’s my fault as a coach that we didn’t go small sooner. In our league, Priory’s got big guys, SHP’s got big guys, and I thought that I should always have a bigger lineup,” Batory said. “When I finally figured it out, the knucklehead that I am, that I should be playing Warriors small ball with the talent that I have, we ripped off a run.”

Runs defined the second half at Palma’s Clayton Gym after the teams were nearly inseparable for the first two quarters. Menlo (21-7) rode a 10-0 surge to take a 43-33 lead, then saw top-seeded Palma (21-5) go on a 25-9 assault to go up six before the Knights got the final 11 to pull out the win.

Ryan Roggio’s back-to-back threes gave the Chieftains a 58-52 lead with 3:11 left, and the Knights still trailed by five with 90 seconds remaining after Lucas Vogel drew a charge. Danny Solomon hit a 3-pointer from the wing with 1:04 left, and the Knights followed with a stop that gave them the opportunity to hold for the final shot. Rather than wait around, Reznik took a Solomon pass, threw up a three in transition and put his team back in front.

“Usually, we either go Lucas or Danny, but I was ready for that shot,” Reznik said.

Palma never got off a potential game-winner. Cort Halsey poked the ball out at the top of the arc, Vogel picked it up in transition and was fouled with 3.9 seconds left. He made both free throws and the Chieftains threw the ball away on the ensuing inbound. Solomon was fouled with 2.6 left and made both free throws to seal the game.

“In hindsight, could I have called timeout there? Yeah, but I trusted my guys to make plays,” Palma head coach Kelley Lopez said of the final sequences. “We were good that whole fourth quarter, and at the end of the day, they made one more play.”

It would be perfectly understandable for Lopez to have nothing but confidence in his team entering the last minute. The Chieftains closed the gap to 45-40 on back-to-back Colton Amaral layups to close the third quarter, got within two when Joey Finley recorded a three-point play on a putback and took a one-point lead on Amaral’s three with 6:38 remaining. Vogel’s 3-pointer at the other end put the Knights back in front, but Palma went ahead again on Amaral’s four-point play with 5:14 left. Menlo tied it at 52 on a Solomon layup, but Roggio’s back-to-back threes had Palma ahead and the home crowd rocking in the final minutes.

Through the storm, Menlo’s confidence never dipped. The Knights managed to hold Palma scoreless over the final 3:11, making Batory the sixth head coach in school history to pilot a team to a section crown.

“One of our team goals is always mental toughness and resilience,” Batory said. “I do a gameday one-pager, and I always put a quote at the bottom. The quote that I chose today was that a team is not a group of people working together. A team is a group of people that trust each other. That trust was super evident today.”

The mix of trust and confidence was certainly displayed in the final minute, with Reznik, a newcomer to the program, hoisting up the go-ahead shot instead of looking to Solomon or Vogel.

“I didn’t call bank, but it doesn’t matter,” he joked. “A three’s a three.”

The end result was a balanced attack for Menlo. Vogel led with 17 points and Solomon had 14 along with five assists, but the duo had no shortage of support. Reznik scored 11, Mead scored eight and dished out four assists and Will Eggemeier finished with six points and seven rebounds, all while defending Joey Finley.

Finley, a 6-foot-6, 225-pound monster of a football player, posed a matchup problem against a Knights team that lacked even a remotely comparable body, but they managed to stop him from completely taking over the game. Considering the sheer difference in size, holding him to 11 points and 10 rebounds is nothing short of a success.

“Everyone played really well defensively. We all helped on him,” Eggemeier said. “We went zone to limit his touches, and if he got in the paint, we helped on him. We were talking, moving really well and we made sure he didn’t completely take over the game.”

Amaral led Palma with 19 points, knocking down four threes. Roggio finished with 11 points, scoring nine in the second half, and also recorded seven rebounds and four assists. Matthew Kosta scored 10, while Nate Jean-Pierre, a three-year starter like Finley, had seven points, seven rebounds and four assists.

The teams were nearly inseparable throughout the first two-and-a-half quarters, with neither team leading by more than four. Menlo hit five threes in the first quarter to take a 20-19 lead, and the teams were deadlocked at 25 going into the half after combining to shoot 5-for-19 in the second quarter. Kosta’s layup tied the game at 33 exactly halfway through the third before Menlo unleashed a 10-0 run, getting back-to-back threes from Reznik and Robby Enright, an Enright floater and a Vogel steal and layup. Palma caught fire again in the following minutes, but the Knights were able to counter each run, mixing 1-3-1 and 2-3 zones with man defense.

“The coaches have given us a lot of tools in our tool shop, as they say,” Eggemeier explained. “When you throw a different look at a team, it can get them out of their rhythm and get us into a defense that we’re comfortable with.”

While the Knights had last won a section title in 2017 with a memorable overtime victory against Half Moon Bay, Palma’s drought continues. The Chieftains have lost three consecutive CCS Championship games, last winning one under Paul Alioto in 2007. They’ve yet to win one under Lopez, though he has led the team to Open Division berths in 2016 and 2017 with Jamaree Bouyea, who now stars at USF, as well as in a shortened 2021 campaign.