SAN FRANCISCO - The host St. Ignatius Wildcats continued their impressive streak of victories on the home court Friday night, spoiling a long trip down from Oregon for their opponent in the process. St. Ignatius catapulted itself into the championship game of its own Leo LaRocca Sand Dune Classic with a 63-46 win over the Canby (Oregon) Cougars.
The scoreboard favored the Wildcats (5-1) for the majority of the night, due in large part to leading scorer, senior forward Julian Marcu. His 17 points came on a remarkable 8-of-9 shooting (89 percent), and his 12 at half were highly influential towards the 30-14 gap that SI had opened up going into the break.
Canby (4-2) did not outscore the Wildcats in any of the first three quarters, but played its best defense in the second, locking down the production of the SI backcourt, as well as forcing star Wildcat point guard Trevor Dunbar to sit on the bench from 7:30 left in the second all the way until halftime due to foul trouble. The problem with that plan was that Marcu was on his A-game.
“Having a guy inside the paint that knows what his abilities are, and the type of shots that he can and can’t take is a tremendous benefit,” said SI coach Tim Reardon. “Julian is a guy that I know has talent that reflects towards the other players. He’s just one of those guys that makes everyone around him better, and tonight that was evident.”
Canby High School coach Craig Evans saw how Marcu’s play affected his team early in the game: “I think we played more towards our identity in the second half, but the reason we got caught so far behind in the first two quarters was that we just didn’t play our brand of basketball. They were driving inside on us at will, and on offense we had good looks that we just didn’t convert on.”
If the first half was Marcu’s, the second half belonged to another SI big man, 6-8 center Troy Rike. Having only one point through the first two quarters, Rike exploded in the third, going 4-for-6 from the field, mostly on mid-range jump shots, ultimately scoring nine points in the quarter. He finished the game with 11 points and four assists.
“It wasn’t anything that coach told me to do differently, but I kind of just play with a very free mentality on the court,” Rike said. “I was passing the ball more in the first half, and maybe because of that I was open more in the third quarter, so I took advantage of that.”
On the opposite side of the court, Canby guard Austin Evans scored 11 of his 14 total points in the third quarter, working to try to keep his team within range of an improbable victory, but the 51-28 gap created at the end of the quarter by the Wildcats eliminated any chance of a comeback.
Despite the space between both these teams going into the final quarter, Canby did not quit, scoring 18 points - its best quarter - to make the final score a bit easier on the eyes for its fans.
As SI moves on to the championship game against St. Joseph Notre Dame of Alameda Saturday night, coach Reardon is glad with the fresh legs he hopes his guys will have.
“Being able to sit most of my starters for the fourth quarter, and have them rest up in a tournament schedule that has us playing three games in a row is critical,” he said. “I was happy with the tempo our guys had tonight, and I was especially pleased with how readily our guys shared the ball. It allowed us to not have one specific guy that was carrying the workload.”
SI improves upon its win the previous night against cross-town opponent Mission High School, a game in which the Wildcats managed to put up a tremendous amount of points for a high school game, winning 91-60. Canby, which had previously beaten Oakland’s Skyline High School 65-49, heads back up north with a better sense of camaraderie than it had upon arrival.
“Ever since I’ve been head coach, I’ve told my guys that we are going to do at least one long distance trip a year,” said coach Evans. “Regardless of the outcome, it allows us to come together as a team, and for the guys to be around each other outside of a school environment. We didn’t get the result we were looking for tonight, but I’m still happy with how our team is coming together.”
