PAL teams struggle at Lions Club Tournament

While Dowd will never be accused of blatantly trying to rig the tournament for his Panthers to win, he does admit he tries to set it up for his team to make the finals.

But with the strength of the tournament, not even that is a guarantee.

In fact, all three Peninsula Athletic League teams in the tournament — in addition to Burlingame, Half Moon Bay and Hillsdale also participated — struggled in the tournament that hasn’t been won by a PAL team since Half Moon Bay did it 2015.

And Burlingame? It hasn’t won its tournament since 2011.

While winning a preseason tournament would be nice, it’s not the ultimate goal.

“When we’re putting it together … we want to play tough teams, compete and try to get better every game,” Dowd said. “The (Westmont) tournament last week, we accomplished those things.”

A week later, however, Dowd admits his team may have taken a step back. But the Panthers weren’t the only ones to struggle. All three teams went 1-2 in the tournament, with only Half Moon Bay finishing on a happy note as the Cougars routed Pioneer 84-58 after losing their first two games of the tournament.

Half Moon Bay has been a regular at the Lions Club Tournament for the last decade, spanning two coaching staffs. Current head coach John Parsons said he continues to come to the tournament because of what it offers.

“It’s a tradition,” Parsons said. “They run a great tournament here. It’s well managed. It’s the oldest tournament in San Mateo County. That means something (to me).”

Burlingame opened the tournament with a stunning, buzzer-beating loss to Hillsdale, but rebounded to blast Pioneer in the second round, only to come up short against Stuart Hall, the defending Division 5 state champion, in the fifth-place game, 56-48.

Dowd was in a feisty mode before the game even started after the officials told him the Panthers would be assessed a pre-game technical foul after they determined a Panther player dunked the ball during warm-ups, which is not allowed.

Later in the first quarter, Dowd was hit with a technical.

Through it all, Burlingame battled to a 23-22 lead at halftime.

In the third quarter, Burlingame hit on its first five shots of the quarter. Kevin Chiu and Zaden Martin scored off drives to the bucket before Kyle Haslam took over by scoring six straight points.

Despite their hot shooting, the Panthers could not add much distance from the Knights.

“We weren’t getting any (defensive) stops,” Dowd said.

When Chiu hit a pair of free throws with 3:07 left in the quarter, Burlingame held a 35-30 lead.

The Hall, however, ended the period on a 10-4 run to take a 40-39 into the final quarter.

There were five lead changes and one time through the first four minutes of the fourth before The Hall pulled away, outscoring Burlingame 16-7 to take fifth place.

“Last week, we made mistakes and played through them,” Dowd said. “This week … we didn’t execute as well. … We got to get better at end-of-game situations.”

Burlingame was led by Martin, who scored 16 points. Haslam added nine points to go along with six rebounds.

Hillsdale could not parlay its 45-44 win over Burlingame into a second-round victory, falling to Palo Alto in the semifinals and then getting blown out by St. Francis-La , 58-31, in the third-place game Friday night.

Hillsdale hung with the Golden Knights for a quarter, leading 14-12 after one with six players scoring. But St. Francis turned up the heat in the second, outscoring the Knights 19-3 to lead 31-17 at the half, a period in which Hillsdale went nearly seven minutes without scoring.

St. Francis continued its hot play in the third quarter, outscoring Hillsdale 16-7 to 47-24 going into the fourth quarter.

Hillsdale was led by Brady Carson, who finished with 10 points. He was the only Knight to score in double figures.

San Mateo County wasn’t completely shutout Friday night, however. Priory, which was in the Division 5 Nor Cal final last season, losing to Stuart Hall, improved to 8-0 on the season after beating Palo Alto 55-45 in the championship game.