MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Needing a win to claim their share of first place in the WCAL, the Bellarmine Bells didn’t overcomplicate things on Tuesday night.
They fed the ball inside to Ian Elam and Ryan Kiachian again and again, sucking the life out of what was once an enthusiastic home crowd and rolling to a 56-33 win at St. Francis, outscoring the entire Lancers roster to conclude the regular season in a three-way tie for first place alongside Mitty and Riordan.
“There’s been a great mentality about how physical we want to play the game, whether that’s cutting off driving lanes or denying post entries or defensive rebounding, laying the wood on some screens, being strong with the ball,” head coach Patrick Schneider said. “We’re playing the way we always knew that we could play. I thought up until three weeks ago, we were just not quite clicking, and I think that last loss woke us up to how we need to mature as a team. Individually and collectively, I think the guys have really bought into winning every possession with physical, hard-nosed basketball.”
From the second quarter onward, second-ranked Bellarmine (21-3, 11-3 WCAL) won nearly every possession. Elam went on a personal 11-2 run to start the second quarter, and a pair of Kiachian putbacks sent the Bells into the break up 28-18. Six more points by Elam in the third, four from Josiah Ajiake off the bench and a Kiachian and-1 stretched the lead as wide as 19 during the third quarter and, combined with a defense that didn’t allow a single made 3-pointer after the first quarter, all but silenced a sold-out crowd that had brought tremendous energy in the early phases of the game, even with both schools off for Presidents’ Day.
“When we get three stops in a row, we call it a kill,” said point guard Quinn Denker.
The Bells had plenty of those appropriately-named sequences on Tuesday night, sucking the life out of the crowd as they methodically widened the lead without a single jaw-dropping play. There were no thunderous dunks or blocks, and while the visitors made just two 3-pointers, outside shooting was hardly needed with their physical advantage in the paint, combined with a Lancer team that went just 3-of-23 from beyond the arc.
“Only having (Ryan) Daly as a post, they’re obviously gonna try to take away our guards as much as they can, and they double a lot, so that frees a lot of post play,” Denker added.
Having once sat a full two games out of first place, nearly everything that needed to break right for the Bells after a Jan. 31 home loss to Mitty has fallen into place, creating that three-way tie for first while they’ve also taken care of business, overwhelming teams in the middle with their bigs.
“If you’re only paying attention to one of them, the other’s pretty darn good too,” Schneider said of Elam and Kiachian.
With Elam’s game-high 21 points and the 6-foot-9 Kiachian’s 13, the Bells hardly even needed any offensive production from their bench, a unit that’s typically produced at least one double-digit scorer.
“Communication and rebounding wasn’t what it needed to be tonight,” said St. Francis head coach Mike Motil. “It just seemed like a lot of times we found ourselves trailing plays.”
Outside of the first quarter and the opening minutes of the second, the Lancers were trailing. A pair of early Trevor Leon threes and one from the volleyball lines by Nolan Nepomuceno had the home crowd rocking, but they’d get completely shut down from outside over the final 24 minutes. Isaiah Kerr was the lone scorer in double-figures for eighth-ranked St. Francis (14-10, 6-8).
The loss leaves the Lancers just one win ahead of where they were at the end of WCAL play last year, and they’re likely in line for a similar seed in the CCS Open Division, but considering the lack of experience and expectations surrounding the team, as well as the chemistry that was built just a year removed from a season where things always looked disjointed, it would be hard to call their 2020 run through WCAL play anything other than a major success.
“These seniors, outside of Ryan, didn’t play a whole lot last year,” Motil said of the core of Daly, Leon, Nepomuceno and Kyle Rosecrans. “I don’t think there were a whole lot of expectations coming into this year.”
While the Lancers’ fate isn’t set in stone, they’ll likely be joining Bellarmine in the Open Division and could even meet again as soon as Friday. The Bells will certainly be one of the top three seeds, but just where they’ll be placed remains up for discussion as the seeding committee meets in San Jose on Wednesday.
“We had seven games against league champions, we had one against a league runner-up, and one of the two teams that didn’t make the playoffs was Santa Margarita, who’s in the Trinity League,” Schneider said of his team’s résumé. “They won three games, including JSerra, and their worst loss was to Mater Dei by 16. We beat Santa Margarita by 27. I think that deserves consideration for the number one seed, but as I told the team, it’s gonna take three wins, no matter what they say in a conference room. I’d rather win games than arguments.”
Winning games is something the Bells are no stranger to, entering the playoffs with more than 20 victories for the third time in the last four years and having won five straight since that home loss to Mitty.
