San Mateo Bearcats knocking on the door

“That was our first loss of 2025, so it was a very new thing to us,” San Mateo senior Zidane Auzarang said. “And for San Mateo’s program, we went on a [12-game] winning streak. So, honestly, we were kind of down for the next couple days. Till Monday we were not in it at all.”

Auzarang and his fellow Bearcats (10-1 PAL Ocean, 18-5 overall) returned home to bounce back with one of the biggest wins of the season Wednesday, staying stride-for-stride with shot-intensive Terra Nova to pull away for a 64-51 victory.

Now, it all comes down to this Friday. With the win, San Mateo maintains a first-place tie with Sequoia in the PAL Ocean with one game to go. The Ravens — the benefactor of El Camino’s upset of the Bearcats — also won Wednesday to remain deadlocked atop the league standings.

Sequoia travels to San Mateo for a winner-take-all showdown Friday. Tip-off is scheduled for 7:45 p.m.

“We realized there’s a bigger goal ahead of us,” Auzarang said of the task at hand. “We still have a chance at the league championship. So, we kind of refocused back in ... and we saw as a team the goal is a league championship. It’s our last chance. It’s my last chance to get one. Never got one, not even close, so it’s just an exciting moment.”

Auzarang opened with the red-hot hand Wednesday, hitting four 3-pointers in the first quarter. The senior went on to score a game-high 25 points. Just a day in the life for the PAL’s second leading scorer with a 20.8 average.

San Mateo’s bounce-back win was far from a one-man show, though. The selective Bearcats shot 56.4% from the floor, hitting 22 of 39 shots. Of their 22 made field goals, the Bearcats assisted on half of them with 11 team assists.

“That was huge because Friday was a lot of pounding the basketball and going 1 on 1,” San Mateo Marvin Lui said. “We know Zidane was going to see a lot of attention, but I think we did a good job of not just settling for that first shot out of that first pass, but making the defense pay when they commit two to him.”

Even with the team’s second leading scorer out of action — senior center Manav Ejjalaghatta is due back for the postseason — San Mateo still distributed well. Junior guard Grant Wolfgram totaled 14 points and four assists, while junior Bryan Ehlerman added nine points and senior center Cam Palma had eight.

“Zidane is going to be Zidane,” Lui said. “I think it’s just understanding that trusting his teammates can alleviate some of the pressure off him. Because he’s going to get a lot of attention, and he’s gotten a lot of attention all year throughout league.”

Terra Nova (8-3, 12-10) stayed right with Auzarang and company for three quarters, though. After seven lead changes, the Tigers jumped ahead 32-31 on an Ethan Bradshaw free throw midway through the third quarter. But the eighth lead change would tip the scales, as senior Jon Chan came off the bench to drill a 3-pointer from the elbow to spark a 7-0 San Mateo run.

Bryan Ehlerman followed with a scrappy offensive board on a long, loose ball off a missed 3, then pivoted to the hoop to convert a floater. Wolfgram then got the hoop on a dribble-drive layup to make it 38-32.

Terra Nova senior Ryan Guevara answered with a perimeter 3 to close it to a one-score game, but Auzarang matched the 3-ball from the corner to make it 41-35. A Jesse Martinez free throw and a sweet, underhand finger-roll layup by senior Cody Anderton got the Tigers close, trailing 41-38. But the Bearcats responded with a 9-1 run, sparked by an Auzarang 3 to open the fourth quarter and capped by a clever baseline layup with Byron Ehlerman pivoting under the cylinder for an underhand finish.

“Knowing that we’ve been in these situations so many times, and we just can’t give up,” Auzarang said of San Mateo ability to close it out. “Because last year we were in so many close games, and we were up and then we’d kind of give it away.”

Terra Nova junior Kai Gieraths scored a team-high 15 points, as the Tigers shot an impressive 48.8% from the field. They have been the most prolific 3-point shooting team in the PAL Ocean, entering play with a league-best 66 made 3s. San Mateo, however, limited the Tigers to 1 of 5 from long range in the first half, with Terra Nova hitting 5 of 13 3s overall.

“It’s been a point where we kind of rely on our defense,” Lui said. “In the first half, we didn’t do a good job. Terra Nova was getting to the basket. So, I think in the second half we cleaned it up a little bit in terms of team defense and, if anything, made things a little bit tougher for them.”

San Mateo dominated the boards 38-17.

San Mateo hasn’t been a contender for over a generation, finishing with a .500 league record just once in the previous 12 years — a 6-6 mark in 2017-18 to place fifth in the old PAL South Division. The Bearcats won their last league title in the PAL Lake Division in 2011-12. The program’s last PAL Ocean Division championship was in 2000-01.

Auzarang is a third-year varsity senior looking for his first title. The sharpshooter was a late bloomer in the basketball world, getting serious about the sport at age 12, looking up to a family of good basketball players and idolizing the Splash Brothers of the Golden State Warriors heyday of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.

“That kid has worked and he has earned everything that he shows out on the court,” Lui said. “He gets so many reps in, day in and day out. He didn’t shoot like that as a freshman when he was here. He just ... worked his tail off. I think that’s rubbed off on some of our guys in terms of putting in that extra work. But everything that he is, how he shows as a shooter, how he’s developing overall as a player ... is just due to his tireless work ethic.”