ATHERTON, CA — If the Pinewood High boy’s basketball had any hopes of winning the West Bay Athletic League title this year they have had a major obstacle in their way — a trip to Atherton to take on defending two-time defending champion Sacred Heart Prep which was looking to secure its third straight WBAL title on senior night.
The Panthers succeeded by weathering a late Gators surge with some timely 3-point shooting and clutch free throw shooting to defeat SHP 72-68 in a huge WBAL game Friday night lifting Pinewood into a first-place tie with SHP in the WBAL standings.
“Our boys are very experienced, very tough and very competent,” Pinewood coach Jason Peery said. “They hit big free throws and made big plays and just played really hard I’m so proud and honored to be able to coach them.”
Going into the fourth quarter Pinewood held a 57-43 lead but slowly SHP kept cutting into the Panthers’ lead.
The Gators got to within two at 67-64 with 58.8 seconds left in the game when Kyle Stalder grabbed an offensive rebound and hit put back while being fouled for an and-one.
Stalder would knock down the free throw. On the following possession Pinewood’s Connor Riches drew a foul and knocked down two clutch free throws to make 70-65 with 31.8 seconds left.
A Mason Randall 3-pointer made it 70-68 Pinewood with 8.8 left and on the ensuing play forced to foul the Gators fouled Nathan Beak who knocked down both free attempts to seal the win for the Panthers.
“It was a huge team win, we haven’t won here in a couple of years,” Matthew Peery, son of Jason said. “I’ve never beaten Sacred Heart in any sport so it was huge to get them at their place.”
Matthew finished with a game-high 23 points and six rebounds. Ryan Knotts added 20 points, three blocks and two steals. Kyle Murphy and Beak each scored 11 while Riches chipped in with nine. Murphy filled the stat sheeting with five boards, six assists and two steals.
After the first quarter things looked bleak as SHP took a 21-12 advantage going into the second quarter.
That’s when Pinewood began a box-and-one defense around Randall — SHP’s leading scorer who scored 11 points in the first quarter — and from there the Gators offense never quite got in sync until very late in the fourth quarter.
“First thing coach said after the first quarter was ‘we aren’t going to lose this game,’” Beak said. “When a coach has that positive attitude and that undying belief in you have to buy-in. We gathered as a team went on a huge run — got some transition buckets, played great defense — Ryan Knotts and Roshan Bol were absolute monsters.”
While the Gators went ice cold the Panthers got red hot from the outside and it fueled its transition game as well as its defense.
The Panthers turned a nine-point end of the first deficit into a 39-32 lead going into halftime.
“They made a good adjustment putting a box-and-one and Kyle Murphy on me,” said Randall who led the Gators with 17 points and also grabbed six rebounds. “I think that really took us out of our rhythm for a little bit and they took advantage and got a lot of momentum.”
The third quarter wasn’t much kinder to SHP who fell behind double-digits early in the quarter and wouldn’t be able to get within striking distance until late in the fourth.
After a red hot start in the first SHP coach Tony Martinelli felt his team let its foot off the gas pedal and it affected them on both sides of the ball.
“For a while we got soft around the middle,” Martinelli said. “We didn’t attack, were missing 3s and got back on our heels. They played excellent basketball during that stretch to really put us on our heels.”
Giving up big leads has been a bit of an issue for the Gators this season even when they finally got their football players back in mid-December.
“The problem with us recently is we allow teams to get up too much on us,” Martinelli said. “Then we have to expend a lot of energy to comeback and even the best of players when their legs go it makes it tougher. We’re making the game a little harder than it needs to be and if we don’t fix that than we aren’t going to accomplish the things that we want to accomplish.”
Stalder had 16 points, grabbed nine rebounds, had two assists and two blocks while Tevin Panchal had 11 points and Connor Moses chipped in with 10.
Andrew Daschbach filled the stat line for the Gators grabbing a game-high 12 rebounds with five steals, three blocks and scoring five in the loss for SHP.
“Fourth quarter we fought our hearts and I’m really happy about that,” Randall said. “But it was tough to come out with a loss. We dug ourselves too big of a hole it’s frustrating.”
SHP (12-10, 10-2) will now need to win its last two games both on the road against Eastside College Prep and Woodside Priory if they hope to at the very least win a share of the WBAL title.
Pinewood (15-8, 11-2) will wrap its regular season when they host ECP at 5 p.m. next Friday Feb. 19th in Los Altos Hills.
