MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — For the St. Francis High boys basketball team it was all about keeping it simple and settling down.
In front of their boisterous home fans and even louder student section it isn’t always that easy.
“This place is hype, the kids are hype,” St. Francis coach Mike Motil said.
But once the Lancers settled down and put the clamps on defense the student section brought out the “It’s a blowout, it’s a blowout” chants.
St. Francis remained the lone unbeaten in West Catholic Athletic League play when the Lancers defeated visiting Bellarmine 59-41 Friday night.
“Take out all of the distractions and try and relax and be in the moment” Motil said of his pre-game talk to his team. “Just go play a basketball game. Once we settled down I thought the last two or three minutes in the first half we finally settled down and got the game going we wanted to.”
After being down 9-8 after the first quarter the Lancers started getting into a rhythm both on the offensive and defensive end.
But a 4-of-12 performance from the free throw line and Bellarmine going 10-of-12 meant the Bells only trailed 23-18 going into halftime.
“If we could’ve cleaned up some things at least going into the half it felt like we could steal one here,” Bellarmine coach Patrick Schneider said. “(St. Francis) simply wouldn’t let this game be stolen from them.”
St. Francis (11-2, 4-0 WCAL) started off the third quarter on a 10-2 run to grab a double digit lead with four minutes to go in the third and the Lancers didn't allow the Bells to get within single digits the rest of the game.
“We knew if we kept up on the defensive end we would get layups in transition,” said St. Francis’ Noah Stapes. “They were going to get tired. We have too much depth on our team so we knew if we beat them up it would start opening things up.”
Stapes led a very balanced Lancers offense with a game-high 15 points and added six rebounds as six different players scored at least six points.
Balanced scoring on offense is nothing new to the Lancers.
“(When) we share the ball we are tough to defend. Who are you going to key on?,” Motil said. “You can’t because any guy can do it on any night and that’s what’s great about this team.”
Gabe Adzich, Darius Thomas and Giuseppe Benedetti all scored eight points while Logan Johnson added seven and four steals while Peter Hewitt chipped in with six points and seven rebounds.
“When we share the ball we get things moving,” Benedetti said. “It makes it pretty easy to score. When we get stagnant that’s when we get in trouble.”
The Lancers were anything but stagnant on defense, which led to a bevy of steals resulting in layups on the other end.
Bellarmine (10-3, 2-2) was playing its third straight game without star guard Angelo Athens.
After missing the previous two games with an elbow injury, Athens missed Friday’s contest with an illness and didn’t travel with the team to the game.
Without Athens the Lancers made it a priority to stop guard Jake Wojcik and succeeded. Wojcik scored a team-high 11 points including going 8-for-10 from the free thrown line but was held to only one field goal.
“We came in knowing we were going to have to lock up on Jake Wojcik after he had such a great game against Mitty,” Stapes said. “He’s an amazing player and only a sophomore and we knew we would have to throw everything at them on defense for our defense to work.”
Noah Clark scored 10 points and had five rebounds for the Bells while Anthony Saso scored seven and Kieran Bradford tallied six.
“They are ranked as the best team in the section and are the only undefeated team in the league for a reason,” Schneider said. “They showed it defensively today and are so skilled offensively with so many guys that can score in so many ways — they are a fantastic team.”
The Bells are at Archbishop Riordan at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday night. St. Francis meets Bishop O'Dowd on Monday in the MaxPreps Martin Luther King Classic at Haas Pavilion in Berkeley at 7:30 p.m.
