Half Moon Bay falls in Nor Cals

It was a tale-of-two-halves kind of game that saw Half Moon Bay suffer a season-ending loss 49-44 to No. 4-seed Central Catholic (30-2 overall). It marked the second straight year the Cougars were eliminated in the Nor Cal quarterfinals by the small private school in Modesto.

“They’re just a solid team all the way around,” Half Moon Bay senior Ethan Menzies said. “We just didn’t get the job done the last two years.”

After trailing by 11 at halftime, however, No. 5-seed Half Moon Bay (25-6) made a spirited run at a comeback, whittling it down to a one-score differential when point guard Sam Treanor — who totaled a game-high 21 points — cut to the hoop for a lay-up while drawing a foul for an and-1 attempt with 1:35 to play.

With the Cougars trailing 47-44, Treanor missed the free throw. He had converted 10 of 10 from the stripe to that point. Then, when Half Moon Bay got the ball back off a Central Catholic miss with just over one minute to play in regulation, the Cougars’ Nor Cal hopes sustained an insurmountable hit when Treanor, attempting to drive to the hoop, was called for a charging penalty, his fifth of the game, sending him off the floor for the last time in his high school career.

“I decided to go for the quick 2 instead of the 3,” Treanor said. “In the moment, I just felt that there was a gap right there after I got the handoff. So, I drove to the hoop and I guess it was called a charge on me.”

Fouls were the story of the game through the first half. In fact, Treanor picked up two on one play — first for a blocking foul then, as he yelled at his own teammate about a missed defensive assignment, he was levied with a technical foul as the referee thought Treanor was yelling at him.

Half Moon Bay was slapped with 16 fouls in the first half alone, leaving Treanor, senior guard Jake Quosig, junior forward Sorie Syme and senior guard David Billington with three fouls apiece by halftime.

“It was very difficult to play out there in the first half,” Half Moon Bay head coach John Parsons said. “I told the players at halftime, we can’t focus on what we can’t control. We can’t control what they call, so … I didn’t want them diverting their energy into something that wasn’t useful for us. So, we just tried our best to stay focused.”

To go with their 16 fouls, though, the Cougars also committed 16 turnovers in the first half. Central Catholic put on a defensive show in front of a capacity crowd, pressuring around the perimeter for a run of takeaways, including sophomore guard Dayton Magana’s five steals, all before the half.

Menzies accounted for all of the Cougars’ offense in the early going. The senior center — who in Half Moon Bay’s Central Coast Section Division IV championship-game victory scored a career-high 38 points — scored the first seven points of the night for the Cougars as they tried to keep pace with Valley Oak League Most Valuable Player Joshua Hamilton.

A senior point guard, Hamilton was the most graceful athlete of the floor Saturday. He hit a spectacle 16-foot fade-away jumper in the first quarter as Central Catholic built a 10-4 lead. In the second quarter he drilled a 3 to extend the lead to 24-19. And his well-timed bounce pass to senior forward Malcolm Clayton turned into a single-dribble, power lay-up to up the lead 33-19 just before half.

Still, Half Moon Bay was able to limit Hamilton to a team-high 17 points.

“They did a very good job of making things difficult for us shooting,” Central Catholic head coach Mike Wilson said. “[Hamilton] had to work extra hard just to get off any shot off. … That’s probably one of the hardest games he’s had to work.”

And, just before halftime, Treanor gave the Cougars some momentum heading into the break when he responded to the Hamilton-Clayton connection by banking a half-court prayer off the glass and in for a buzzer-beater to close the deficit to 33-22.

“It helped a little,” Treanor said. “We were still very frustrated, obviously, with the ton of free throws and the slow pace. We couldn’t get flow in the game. So, that was annoying.”

In the second half, Half Moon Bay switched up its defense, going from man coverage to a matchup zone. It helped force Central Catholic off the dribble and dared the Raiders to shoot from the outside.

“Because of the foul count we had to completely change our defense,” Parsons said. “We’re not a zone defensive team. But just with guys in foul trouble, we had to switch to a zone, which we had practiced this week. So we were prepared to do that just to throw them off their rhythm. And, yeah, it seemed like it took away their driving lanes and turned them into a jump-shooting team there in the second half.”

Half Moon Bay outscored Central Catholic 16-10 in the third quarter, with Treanor and senior forward Gavin Tomberlin knocking down a pair of late 3s to close the lead to 41-36. In the fourth quarter, Menzies — who went for 17 points and nine rebounds — posted up on a strongman’s left-handed spin move to keep the differential at five 47-42.

Half Moon Bay had, at last, gotten a rhythm going, much in part to the officials not calling nearly as many fouls.

“Once they figured that out, guys started being way more aggressive,” Menzies said. “They started playing harder and stuff.”

But the foul totals cost Half Moon Bay. Quosig — the Cougars’ best on-ball defender — had to sit an extraordinary amount of minutes throughout. And in the final minute, both Treanor and Tomberlin fouled out.

After Treanor walked off the court, Magana got to the line and hit both free throws to all but seal the win for Central Catholic.

The Raiders shot just 33.3 percent (15 of 45) from the floor, but opened with a furious pace, hitting 7 of 11 in the first period.

“As far as [Central Catholic’s] season’s been, our biggest problem the whole year has been — I compare it to a gas pedal; we’ll push it all the way down to the floor and then we let up,” Wilson said.

Half Moon Bay came close to taking advantage of the late letup. But the Cougars shot just 31.8 percent themselves, including 4 of 20 from beyond the arc.

“There’s no quit in this group,” Parsons said. “They fight hard till the end. So, I had no doubt that we wouldn’t stop fighting. We got a couple buckets to go down there but just not quite enough to get it done.”