PORTOLA VALLEY, Calif. — For everything the Priory boys basketball team had done in recent years – three CCS titles in six seasons and deep NorCal playoff runs – a West Bay Athletic League title had been elusive for the program ever since joining the league before the 2008-09 season.
That finally changed on Tuesday afternoon in the most dramatic fashion imaginable, with sophomore Tayo Sobemehin’s last-second layup propelling the Panthers to a 60-59 win over the Sacred Heart Prep Gators, completing a perfect 12-0 run in league play and earning his team a well-deserved league championship.
“That was the first option and I didn’t think it would be there, but he went so quickly through that double screen,” head coach David Moseley said of Sobomehin. “All of their players had their backs to the ball and Ashton Axe threw a heck of a pass through two guys.”
Priory (14-1, 12-0 WBAL) had the ball with 3.6 seconds left after a Rostand Olama Abanda offensive rebound and a timeout, which Moseley had been frantically calling for for at least three seconds before finally getting the whistle. Sacred Heart Prep (12-7, 10-2), which had taken the lead on a Harrison Carrington free throw with 33.2 remaining, called a timeout in response to set the defense, but Sobomehin, who scored a game-high 26 points, managed to cut past a pair of defenders, take the pass from Axe, dribble to get past the two Gators as they tried to rush back and put in the uncontested layup to win the game and the league championship.
“Just a quick fake,” Sobomehin said. “I had to be patient.”
It was only fitting for the ball to end up in Sobomehin’s hands on the final play. Listed generously at 5-foot-7, he made seemingly every key play for the Panthers. His trio of early 3-pointers helped open up a quick double-digit lead, and he hit two more from beyond the arc in the third to help erase a 12-point deficit.
He hit another from NBA range to open the fourth and cut the lead to one, and his pair of free throws with 1:30 left tied the game at 58, the first time the hosts had drawn even since the early stages of the second quarter.
“Going into the locker room, we just wanted to take it one play at a time,” said Sobomehin. “We knew we weren’t going to come back all at once.”
SHP had all the momentum heading into halftime with a 39-29 lead, having gone on a 29-8 run after facing an early 15-4 deficit and outscoring the Panthers 23-9 in the second quarter. Point guard Aidan Braccia scored 11 of his team-high 19 in the first for the Gators, but it was the reserves who starred in the second quarter, combining for 15 of the team’s 23 points.
Kevin Carney, whose 5-8 listing is only slightly more believable than Sobomehin’s 5-7, knocked down a pair of threes to give his team a 22-20 lead and backup center Will Mackie scored four, including a layup off one of Carney’s four assists for a 12-point advantage before Axe got the final bucket of the half.
Starting center RJ Stephens also scored five of his nine in the quarter, getting a layup off a Teddy Purcell offensive rebound and a 3-pointer from the wing off a Carney assist. The Gators sank four of their eight 3-pointers in the second.
The lead sat at 10 early in the third after a Stephens putback and grew to 43-34 when Purcell answered a Sobomehin three with his lone basket of the game. But the Panthers allowed just six points in the quarter and scored on every possession after SHP did. A timeout to secure a loose ball after a David Ajanaku-Makun offensive rebound led to a Zach Zafran corner three, and after a Ryan Wong putback made it 45-38, an Axe offensive rebound set up Sobomehin’s fifth 3-pointer of the game.
Sobomehin’s shot from NBA range to open the fourth made it 45-44, but Braccia answered with a shot from just as deep for his first points since the opening quarter. The third and final Carney 3-pointer gave the visitors a 53-46 lead, but the Gators scored just once from the field over the final 5:45 of the game, when Braccia’s and-1 gave them a 58-52 advantage with 3:13 to go.
“Our shot selection got way away from us,” SHP head coach Tony Martinelli said of his team’s second-half struggles. “We two had looks by Braccia early in the shot clock that rattled off and they got rebounds where we were staggering down the court. When we took good shots, the lead was able to build in the first half.”
Olama Abanda, a 6-4 sophomore from Cameroon, was huge on defense in the final minutes as the Panthers stayed within striking distance. He scored six of his eight points in a two-minute stretch in the fourth, with a pair of steals and layups to cut the lead to 58-56.
“My friends look to me to always play defense,” said Olama Abanda, who is fluent in both French and English. “Anytime when I’m involved, I always give 100 percent.”
Both teams traded misses after Sobomehin sank both ends of a 1-and-1 with 1:30 left to tie the game, and Carrington was fouled with 33.2 left. With a sizable student section trying to throw him off, he missed the first attempt off the front of the rim but made the second. Olama Abanda’s rebound of his own miss and Zafran’s play to keep the ball inbounds prolonged the ensuing play long enough for the referees to finally grant Moseley his final timeout, and Axe’s pass set Sobomehin up for a shot that’ll be remembered at the Division V school for years to come.
While the Panthers have been a prominent contender in Division V for a while, appearing in nine section championship games since 2002 and winning three, they have their sights set on something bigger this year, hoping to play in the CCS Open Division for the first time in program history.
“That’s what this game was about for these young men,” Moseley said. “They feel like they can battle with some of the best, and they want that opportunity.”
If Wednesday’s seeding meeting does put the Panthers in the Open field, they’d be the first Division V team to play in the Open Division on the boys side. Pinewood and Eastside Prep have been regulars in the girls Open field.
“I think they have to be,” said Martinelli, who serves as the WBAL’s representative for the seeding meeting. “They’ve done everything they had to do. Their only loss is to an Open team.”
The defeat likely sends the Gators, who got a team-high 19 points from Braccia, into the Division IV field. They last won the Division IV crown in 2014 and have appeared twice in the Open Division since then.
“For the seniors, their goal was to win a league championship and then a CCS championship,” Martinelli said. “The league championship didn’t happen but the CCS championship is still there for them. None of these guys have won one, and they’d like to go out with one.”