SAN FRANCISCO — Is it too early to declare a game of the year? Because Saturday afternoon’s battle between Monte Vista and St. Joseph Notre Dame, part of the final day of the 43rd Leo LaRocca Sand Dune Classic, will be tough to beat.
Never mind that most leagues haven’t even started playing yet. Forget that there’s a month’s worth of playoff basketball. Monte Vista’s 69-65 triple-overtime win, in which the Mustangs led 19-0 and trailed by six with 15 seconds left in the second overtime, will be remembered as a game with more twists and turns than Lombard Street.
“What a battle,” said Monte Vista head coach Nick Jones. “Shootout at the O.K. Corral.”
St. Joseph Notre Dame (7-5) surrendered the first 19 points and never led in regulation, but after holding Monte Vista to just four points in the third quarter and drawing within two early in the fourth, scored six points over the final minute of regulation to force overtime. Julian Vaughns and Eric Greer each made a pair of free throws, and after the ‘Stangs turned over the inbound pass, a long baseline jumper by Vaughns knotted the score at 44 with 12 seconds remaining. Noah Rivas’ desperation shot at the buzzer nearly banked in, but it rattled off the rim and sent the contest to overtime.
Each team scored just four points in the first OT period, with Monte Vista drawing even on a pair of Nate Rutchena free throws with 25.3 left. A three-point play by Vaughns with 1:23 left gave the Pilots their first lead of the entire night.
Chaos reigned in the second overtime. SJND got a pair of Adam Campos free throws six seconds into the frame and led by three with 2:28 left when Vaughns split a pair at the line. A drive to the basket by Eric Greer (10 points) grew the lead to five, and though Anthony Santa Maria cut it to 53-50 on the next possession, two free throws by Vaughns with 26.7 left seemed to put the game out of reach, and after one of MV’s 25 turnovers, he made one more with 16.8 left.
A Rivas 3-pointer brought the Mustangs within three with 8.3 seconds left, and an errant inbound pass gave the ball back to Monte Vista (9-3) with 7.9 to go. Rutchena inbounded the ball, took the pass back from Rivas and drilled a corner three to tie the game and force one more extra period.
In that third additional period, Monte Vista brought back the offense that started the game with a 19-0 run. The Mustangs, who had scored 31 points over 33 minutes before the heroic threes by Rivas and Rutchena, made their first five baskets of triple-OT, with four of those coming from Rutchena. He and Vaughns traded baskets on the first four possessions to tie the game at 60, and Rutchena set up a Santa Maria 3-pointer before Vaughns tied it with a three of his own. Rutchena finally created some separation by scoring amidst heavy traffic in the lane and then draining a 3-pointer to put his team ahead by five.
“Every time I called a play, we had an issue, so in the last couple overtimes, we just told Rutchena to go to the hole,” said Jones. “Without (Kris) Bortz, our back-to-the-basket presence wasn’t there, so we just told Rutchena to go to the bucket.”
Tyler Woods would get the Pilots within one possession, and after Rutchena finally missed, a Vaughns three that would have tied the game missed but went out of bounds off a Mustang with 16 seconds left. Finally, an airballed 3-pointer was rebounded by Rutchena, who was sent to the line with 2.7 to go and made one of two to seal one of the most dramatic games in the histories of two programs that are no strangers to heart-stopping finishes.
The crazy drawn-out ending was made all the more remarkable by the way the game started, with Trent Stechschulte scoring nine of his 11 points on 3-pointers as part of that 19-0 run to start the game. Baskets by Vaughns and Greer before the first quarter ended finally stopped the run, but it seemed that the early cushion would be more than enough for a Monte Vista team that had displayed incredible ball movement throughout all three games of the Sand Dune Classic.
MV scored just eight points in the second quarter as the Pilots switched to man defense, but they still went into the half with a 27-13 lead despite the slower pace. It was a four-point third quarter that completely transformed the game, though the seeds were planted in the second as Don Lippi’s defensive adjustments paid off.
“We haven’t seen pressure like that all year. You can’t simulate that in practice,” said Jones. “We put seven against five and run guys on and off the court to practice double-teams, but you can’t simulate that.”
A Kobe Kiener 3-pointer to open the third got the Pilots within 11, and after a Jakob Meciar basket with five-and-a-half minutes left in the quarter, St. Joe's went on a 10-0 run, drawing within three on two of Vaughns’ game-high 33 points before Stechschulte scored the last basket of the quarter.
Campos (14 points) started the fourth with a 3-pointer from the wing, but the Monte Vista lead grew back to six with four points from Rutchena, who scored six in the quarter and 15 in the extra period to lead the Mustangs with 25. He also had 10 rebounds and shot 7-of-8 on free throws. When Jason Lai scored off a nice pass from Rutchena in the paint, MV led by eight with 4:15 left, and though Campos and Vaughns would quickly score out of an SJND timeout, three of Santa Maria’s 16 points seemed to put the game away. Two Matt Musselman free throws made it 44-38 with 1:03 left before the Pilots amped up the defensive pressure to unthinkable levels and got clutch baskets by Vaughns to send the game to overtime.
“It’s a learning opportunity,” said Lippi. “We had a bad start, a good finish and a lot of experience gained.”
The Pilots won just one of their three games at the tournament, but the other loss came to Los Angeles powerhouse Loyola, a 53-50 defeat to a team led by Stanford commit James Keefe, the son of former Stanford star Adam Keefe. Both St. Joe's and the Mustangs posted wins over Strake Jesuit (Houston).
Monte Vista went 3-0 in the tournament despite missing Bortz for all three games after he injured his ankle during warmups of a win over Strake on the first day of the tournament. Jack Stallard scored 17 in that game but missed the next two days due to illness, illustrating some impressive depth on the Mustangs' roster.
