LOS ALTOS HILLS, Calif. – If there was ever any doubt about where they deserve to be in the Northern California girls basketball pecking order, Pinewood showed just why it is considered one of NorCal’s top teams and more than worthy of its No. 13 spot in the most recent Cal-Hi Sports Top 25 rankings.
The host Panthers made their statement in a convincing 61-38 Saturday afternoon victory over a Bishop O’Dowd team that itself was No. 16 in the last state rankings.
Cal-State Fullerton-bound senior combo guard Una Jovanovic led Pinewood (12-0) with 22 points plus two assists and two steals. She was pretty much unstoppable driving to the basket where a majority of her points came on layups.
Plus, Pinewood head coach Doc Scheppler had the 5-foot-9 Jovanovic guarding 6-0 wing Kennedy Johnson and she did an excellent job checking the UC Santa Barbara-bound senior, holding her to six points, eight rebounds and two blocks.
“Una played her best game as a Pinewood player. She was really, really solid today,” said Scheppler about Jovanovic, who missed almost all of her sophomore season with a knee injury.
An interesting twist is Pinewood is known as a team that likes to shoot the three-point shot and is averaging 12 made per game. Against O’Dowd the dribble drive was working so well the Panthers rarely attempted anything longer than a mid-range shot. As a team they only had three three-pointers and Jovanovic, who is averaging around two made treys per game, never took a shot from outside the arc.
“You tell me why,” responded Scheppler when asked about his team not firing from the outside. “They weren’t helping on any drives so our match-up advantage with Una was finishing marvelously. So was Annika (Decker). When they helped off of those guys, the person they we leaving open was Maia (Garcia), and she had eight points in the first half.”
Decker also had eight points in a first half that saw Pinewood build a 33-21 lead. The Tufts-bound senior finished with 12 points, four assists and two steals. The 6-foot-3 Garcia, a senior who will play basketball and compete in the high jump at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, finished with the eight points and added eight rebounds.
Another Panthers player that played very well was guard Chance Bucher. The senior who will walk on at the University of Portland, had two of the Panthers three –pointers and finished with eight points and a game-high 10 rebounds.
University of San Diego-bound senior guard Courtney Thompson may only be 5-foot-5, but Scheppler assigned her to guard 6-foot-1 O’Dowd wing Amaya Bonner. Thompson held the senior Cal-bound Bonner to a team-high 11 points with six rebounds. She also had the other Pinewood three-pointer and added seven points and three steals.
O’Dowd was in the game early and held three leads with the last being 9-8, but Pinewood went on an 8-2 run to take a 16-11 lead after one quarter and never looked back.
Besides the 12-point lead at the half, the Panthers led 43-31 after three quarters, however they really cranked it up in the final period. They opened with a 13-2 run and led by 26 points until Bonner hit a three-pointer for the final points of the game.
O’Dowd (1-3) has now lost three times to state-ranked teams. Salesian, Archbishop Mitty and now Pinewood. The Dragons haven’t been able to find a lot of games with their gym under construction. That has made scheduling games and practices around all the other sports difficult. As a result, head coach Malik McCord has not been able to schedule some games with teams that have made inquires because he’s not certain about getting proper practice time.
“The situation is difficult with our gym under construction so I didn’t schedule games even though several teams called,” McCord said. “But of the teams we’ve played we haven’t dodged anyone.”
Pinewood has a game with Lynbrook on Wednesday but what Scheppler and his girls are prepping for is the CIF Central Coast Open Division playoffs beginning June 4. The Open will almost assuredly come down to a showdown between Pinewood and Archbishop Mitty as it has four times since the CCS went to an Open Division in 2013.
“We played against a physical, athletic team and what we take out of this game is we can match that physicality and actually hold our own,” Scheppler said.
For Scheppler, the kind of game against O’Dowd was obviously exactly what he felt they needed if they are to beat a big and physical Mitty team in the playoffs.
