More from Half Moon Bay’s win in Nor Cal finals

In Tuesday’s historic 49-47 victory over Lowell-SF in the CIF Northern California Division IV girls’ basketball regional finals, the Cougars proved both of those facets, with and without Dorwin, to be true. The most evident of the latter was when Dorwin was forced to sit for nearly half the third quarter after incurring her fourth foul. It’s the first time several members of the HMB team could recall the star senior not being on the court this season.

“I told her before the season: ‘I never sat my senior year, be prepared to never sit your senior year,’” Half Moon Bay head coach Megan Smith said. “So, she was up for it. And what a player that is.”

Smith, in her first year as head coach of the Cougars in her native Half Moon Bay, was a full-time starter herself at Notre Dame-Belmont. She played in one CIF Nor Cal tournament as a senior in 2014-15, as the Tigers advanced to the second round in Division IV. Whether by coincidence or fate, the HMB girls entered this season having never advanced past the second round of the Nor Cal playoffs.

Each of the Cougars’ last three wins — 52-47 over West Campus-Sacramento; 58-40 over Rio Linda; and Tuesday’s win over Lowell — have been firsts for HMB and for Smith. However, the Cougs’ push to advance to the Nor Cal state championship game for the first time in program history hung in peril Tuesday when Dorwin took a seat with 3:17 to play in the third quarter.

Had it not been for Dorwin’s supercharged first half, nothing in the second might have mattered. HMB got off to a rough start, committing eight turnovers in the first quarter. The first was on the game’s opening possession, when the tense Cougars couldn’t get a shot off against the Cardinals’ swarming defense. The shot clock expired, and Lowell flipped the court quickly for senior guard Patriceia Walsh to drive the lane for a sweet unhand layup for the first of her game-high 25 points.

Lowell opened on a 6-1 run, but Dorwin’s rebounding stabilized the Cougars. While junior center Zoey Lemoge grabbed a game-high 13 rebounds throughout, no one had more than Dorwin’s four first-quarter boards. HMB got clutch 3-pointers from Makena Glynn and Xochitl Nieves in the opening period, and caught Lowell for a 10-all tie heading into the second.

That’s when Dorwin lit a fire under not just her teammates, but the Coastside contingent of fans who packed the Half Moon Bay gymnasium with its largest showing of the season. HMB opened the second quarter on an 11-0 run, with Dorwin scoring the first three buckets — a dribble-drive layup with a strongwoman’s overhand finish; a fast drive for a short, turnaround jumper that rattled home; and another penetrating layup for a scoop score with a dance through traffic.

Lowell’s defense then slowed Dorwin’s scoring, with Walsh grabbing eight of her team-high 12 rebounds in the second quarter. And as quickly as HMB’s 21-10 lead came in the second, it evaporated by the end of the third when Lowell stretched the floor with Walsh’s layups and senior Katie Sen’s 3-pointers to exploit Dorwin’s absence and catch HMB for a 32-32 tie heading into the fourth.

Not that the Cougars didn’t have some big moments in the game’s penultimate quarter. With HMB still enjoying a comfortable advantage, Nieves drilled a 3 from the elbow to up the lead to 30-20. After Lowell rallied back to cut it to a one-score game at 30-27, Nieves, handling the point guard duties exclusively in Dorwin’s absence, turned in a clutch assist pass on a lob over the top to Lemoge, who absorbed contact as she converted a layup before missing the and-1 free throw.

Come the fourth quarter, Dorwin seemed to know the drill in taking the floor as she’d go on to survive the last eight minutes without fouling. Smith’s directions to the senior were simple.

“I didn’t say nothin’,” Smith said. “I just said: ‘Make your frickin’ layups, please!’”

Dorwin’s time on the bench seemed to ice her down, as making a layup was the one thing she couldn’t do. As the two teams battled through four lead changes in the fourth, Dorwin whiffed on several layups. Her only points prior to the game-winner were by virtue of two free throws to give HMB a 43-40 lead with 3:35 to play.

HMB’s field goals through the first seven minutes of the quarter came from Nieves — an impressive left-handed scoop layup, and a splashdown 3 from the wing; from Lemoge — two layups, including a late put-back after a physical offensive board; and from senior power forward Paige Haberman, who went full-on Draymond Green on an inside-out assist pass from Lemoge for a long 2-pointer with her toe on the 3-point arc.

Lemoge and Haberman each contributed three rebounds in the fourth quarter, something of a redemption on the boards. Despite a great size advantage, the Cougars only out-rebounded the scrappy Cardinals 32-30 throughout. Lowell outshot HMB, knocking down 20 field goals to convert at a 38.5% clip. The Cougars made 17 field goals to shoot 36.2%. HMB committed 17 turnovers to Lowell’s 14.

In the closing seconds, however — before a game-ending defensive stand that demonstrated the defensive brilliance of Lemoge and Haberman, and the post duo’s inside-out range — it was Dorwin’s wherewithal to forego a layup attempt that made the difference. Off a sideline rebound out of a timeout, Dorwin drove off the right side and seemed to have a lane with an isolated 1-on-1 against a smaller defender. Instead of going for a shot that hadn’t been working for her, however, she pulled up with a five-foot look to bury a more difficult shot.

“That’s all that matters,” Smith said of Dorwin’s heroic finish.

While it wasn’t nearly as rangy or quite as down to the wire as Michael Jordan’s iconic Game 6 game-winner in the 1998 NBA finals, it sure felt as big a shot to that Coastside contingent of fans who packed the Half Moon Bay gymnasium. And Smith said it was the entire Coastside contingent who fueled the win.

“I want to give major shoutouts,” Smith said. “This doesn’t work without so many people. First of all, the team, the parents, we have an amazing athletic trainer, we have an amazing AD who supports us. We have Heidi who keeps the door for us in games. We have Kiwi who sets up our waters for us. It’s a total team effort around here. And those people are really the heart of it all, and I just come out here and try to represent exactly what they do.”