LOS ALTOS, Calif. — With an experienced and talented senior class, the Los Altos Eagles were a preseason favorite to run away with the SCVAL-De Anza title.
It turns out rival Mountain View has a pretty great group of seniors as well.
Seniors accounted for all but two of the Spartans’ points on Tuesday night as Mountain View led wire-to-wire to sweep the season series with the rival Eagles and take over first place in the De Anza race, 54-49.
“It’s a great feeling,” Mountain View center Jack Pillsbury said. “We’ve been working for this right for the get-go. We were saying our goal is to win league and win CCS, and with this win, we’ve put ourselves in a really good position for that.”
Mountain View (17-6, 9-2 SCVAL-DA) is even in the loss column with both Los Altos (17-4, 8-2) and Palo Alto (14-7, 7-2). The Spartans own the tiebreaker with the Eagles by virtue of a head-to-head sweep, and Los Altos hosts Palo Alto next Tuesday, the final night of the regular season.
“Today was a great win and we’re gonna enjoy it tonight, but we have to get back tomorrow and get ready for our game on Friday,” said Joey Peir, who led the visiting Spartans with 14 points.
A Patrick Kane putback gave the Spartans their largest lead at 37-24 midway through the third quarter before the Eagles got the final three points of the third and opened the fourth with 3-pointers by Andrew Reilly, Shawn Toney and Jerwayne Williams Jr. to cut the lead to a single point.
“Physically, we’ve come a long way, but mentally, to not break there was great,” Mountain View head coach Kevin Mack said. “I knew they were gonna make a run at some point, but it was big that we didn’t let them get the lead.”
Kane found Pillsbury for a three-point play, one of his five assists, to restore momentum with 6:02 remaining. He also set Ryan Davenport up for a mid-range jumper, and Pillsbury scored through a foul with 1:51 to go to put the 12th-ranked Spartans up 44-36. He did miss the ensuing free throws, but the visitors made 10 of their 12 attempts over the final 79 seconds to ice the game.
“Our Achilles heel this year has been free throws, and we made free throws down the stretch tonight,” Mack said.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Mountain View’s win was that Joe Brown scored just five points. Brown scored 19, including the go-ahead 3-pointer with 22 seconds left when the teams first met, but went scoreless in the first half on Tuesday night and made just one shot from the field, a 3-pointer to put his team up 30-21 early in the third.
“Other guys have been stepping up for us lately,” Mack said. “We had an advantage with our depth inside and with our depth in general.”
That depth was evident with the combination of Pillsbury and Kane in the paint. Kane finished with 12 points, while Pillsbury scored 11 and grabbed eight rebounds. Both stayed out of foul trouble, but were able to play aggressively with Aidan Gefken waiting on the bench if needed. The duo was instrumental in Mountain View’s 33-28 rebounding advantage, including a decisive 9-5 margin on the glass in the final quarter.
“Our mentality is to just go for the ball and get it at all costs,” Pillsbury said.
The Spartans led 11-2 in the first quarter after a Peir 3-pointer and closed the first half on a 9-2 run to go into the break up 27-19, with Peir dishing out two assists and Kane accounting for four points and an assist during the stretch. Peir’s second three gave the Spartans their first double-digit advantage at 35-24 with 4:32 left in the third, and the lead reached its apex at 13 shortly thereafter on Kane’s putback.
“Their depth and their physicality is a big strength of theirs, and they got some offensive rebounds and a lot of those 50-50 balls,” Los Altos head coach Trevor Naas said. “That’s something we’ve got to clean up against teams that play like that.”
Reilly scored a game-high 18 for the 13th-ranked Eagles to go along with his seven rebounds and four assists, while Jake Skaggs scored 11 and finished a rebound shy of a double-double. Toney scored nine, all on 3-pointers. His first capped off a 7-0 run to get the Eagles within a point in the second quarter, the second made it 37-36 early in the fourth and the last cut the lead to 46-39 with 1:10 left, but Brown made a pair of free throws after a Los Altos timeout. Reilly’s layup cut the lead to 49-44, but Peir and Kane each made two free throws over the following 15 seconds to seal the game.
The loss not only diminishes the Eagles’ hopes of winning an outright league title (they’ll need to win their final two games and need Cupertino to spoil Mountain View’s Senior Night on Friday), it also likely ends any hopes Los Altos had of becoming the first SCVAL team to reach the CCS Open Division since Palo Alto in 2018.
“The way the brackets fit is out of our control. Wherever the chips fall for CCS, we’ll be ready to go,” Naas said. “We have a lot to play for in front of us. This one hurts, obviously, but we’ll come back tomorrow, have a good day at practice and focus on playing well Friday night.”
Should the Eagles end up in Division I, as expected, they’ll have a chance to earn a third shot at the Spartans. Both teams are expected to be among the top four seeds in a field that could see as many as eight SCVAL teams.
