The Carlmont boys’ basketball team was all but dead, down 11 to Brookside Christian-Stockton in the first round of the Northern California Division IV bracket of the CIF state tournament.
But the Scots had one last gasp left. They went on an 11-0 to tie the Knights at 58-all with 57 left in the game, but Brookside Christian closed out Carlmont with five unanswered over the final minute to pull out a 63-58 victory.
“That was rough,” Carlmont head coach Ron Ozorio said. “(But) we fought. That’s what we wanted.”
Ozorio and the Scots were more than a bit surprised to learn they had earned a bid to the Nor Cal tournament after a semifinal loss in the Central Coast Section Division I bracket.
But the fourth-seeded Scots proved to be more than capable of hanging with the quicker, more athletic and 13th-seeded Knights. Carlmont led for most of the first half, only to trail by one at the break. Brookside Christian led by four after three periods and pushed its lead to 11 four times — the last following a pair of free throws by the Knights’ Geronimo Rubio-De La Rosa with 2:35 left to play.
Rubio-De La Rosa finished with a game-high 26 points.
Carlmont (22-7), however, did not go quietly. The rally started innocently enough as Jake Kennedy, who led the Scots with 18 points, drained a 3-pointer from the right corner.
That bucket seemed to spark him. He came up with a steal on the other end and was fouled on the drive. He made the first free throw and missed the second, but the Scots came up with offensive rebound. Kennedy got the ball back at the top of the arc and canned his second 3 in eight seconds and suddenly the Scots were back in it, down 58-54.
The Scots then traded a steal and a turnover before point guard Sho Takahashi drove the lane and knocked down a scoop to the hoop to close to 58-56.
When Sammy Bean took a pass on the baseline, drove and hit a reverse layup with 57 seconds left, the score was tied at 58.
“We stayed with it,” Ozorio said. “In the past, we might have quit.”
Bean finished with 11 points for the Scots, while Takahashi added 10. Lajuan Nelson added nine and Ben Ledwith finished with eight points for Carlmont.
Rubio-De La Rosa quickly doused Carlmont’s momentum, however, when he converted a three-point play with 37 seconds to play. The Knights grabbed the rebound on the other end and Rubio-De La Rosa hit a pair from the line with 22 seconds left for the final margin of victory.
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“We were never out of it,” Ozorio said. “We hung around and kept ourselves in position (to get the win).”
The Scots started the game quickly as the Knights broke from the gate slowly. Carlmont opened the scoring with a Ledwith layup, followed by a Kennedy 3 and a Bean layup to take a quick 7-0 lead.
A Rubio-De La Rosa 3 sparked a 7-0 run by the Knights to tie the game at 9-all, but the Scots drained a pair 3s of their own — one each by Nelson and Bean — sandwiched around a Zach Burgos floater off the dribble to lead 17-11 after one period.
Carlmont’s shooting cooled off in the second period as they were held to just seven points. The Scots scored the first bucket of the second as Ledwith scored on a short jumper off an inbound pass, but the Knights answered with a 8-0 run to take their first lead of the game, 20-19.
Carlmont answered with a Takahashi 3 and another bucket off the inbound by Ledwith gave the Scots a 24-22 lead with just over a minute to play.
But the Knights scored a fastbreak layup at the buzzer to tie the game at 24 and then hit one of two free throws with no time on the clock following a technical foul on Carlmont for a 25-24 lead.
Ozorio said that final sequence of the half had the Scots down in the locker room at halftime.
“We were not (confident). We were frustrated. The easy baskets hurt us. We had to pick them up again,” Ozorio said. “[The Knights] got to the rim. That’s what they do.”
In the third, Brookside Christian dominated the boards, holding the Scots to one-and-done on most possessions. The Knights scored the first five points of the third, then used a 5-0 run to build a 35-27 lead with 3:36 left in the quarter.
The Scots responded with a three-point play and a 3-pointer from the left corner to close to 37-33 and Carlmont was down 39-35 going into the fourth.
An 8-2 run by Brookside Christian gave the Knights a 52-41 lead with 4:25 left in the fourth and were up 58-47 when the Scots made their final push.
Despite the loss, Ozorio was pleased to see his team play to the very end.
“I was happy. That’s what I wanted,” Ozorio said. “That’s the way we wanted to go.”
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