Sports archives: Burlingame High School boys' basketball team a Peninsula Athletic League dynasty

After a foul, Panthers head coach Jeff Dowd pulled his seniors off the floor as the Burlingame fans showered them with applause. It was a fitting end to a phenomenal PAL career for the likes of Kwesi Bailey, Rodrigo Puliceno, Dean Ferrari, Zac Grotz and company as they accomplished the improbable by capturing a fourth consecutive PAL tournament title in beating the Warriors 62-48.

No team has ever won four in a row, or three in a row for that matter. So maybe it’s time to start thinking of the Panthers boys basketball team as a PAL dynasty.

"It means a lot to our program,” Dowd said, a couple of moments after cutting down the nets on a home floor that the seniors on his team have only lost on once in the last three years. "They’re a great group of kids, we’ve been working really hard. We had (Kyle) Shaffer get hurt and some of the other guys stepped up. I’m proud of this group.”

"It’s a big deal, we’re four-time PAL champions,” Puliceno, the PAL Bay Division MVP said. "I love this team, I love this school - they’ve treated me well and this is like my second home.”

Puliceno, who had to brunt the majority of the load on the inside after Shaffer sprained his ankle in a game against Jefferson, was his usual self. The senior scored 15 points and pulled down nine rebounds. "I feel blessed to coach a kid like him,” Dowd said. "[He’s] a fantastic player.”

Saturday’s victory capped a season where the Panthers rolled through the PAL, winning all 15 of their contests by an average score of 60-40. South City fell victim to the Panthers twice this season, losing by an average of 33 points in both games going into Saturday’s match-up. And the Panthers made it clear from the get-go that Saturday’s final held more domination.

Burlingame jumped out to a 10-1 lead in the first quarter and held a 19-8 advantage by the frame’s end with Puliceno’s nine points equaling more than the entire Warriors team.

"Our execution (wasn’t there),” said South City head coach Jorge Chevez. "We were a little too stagnant, we settled for a lot of open jumpers and we weren’t able to attack the basket. Even though they’re bigger, we still wanted to go at them and we weren’t very smart about that. We just got some bad shots in the first half,” he said.

By the half’s end, seven different Panthers had found the bottom of the net. Puliceno led the way with 12, but the presence of Burlingame’s outside shooters was the real difference. Ferrari, Neil DeQuant and Conor Haupt were true from downtown as Burlingame built a 37-16 lead at halftime.

"We’ve beat them pretty good all three times we’ve played them,” Dowd said. "And I think they did a good job of shooting the 3-ball today. The one thing we said coming in was we don’t want to give up 3’s, we don’t want to give up lay-ups and [we want to] make them live kind of in that mid-range area. The first half, we did a pretty good job of that. They’re a good, quick, athletic team and sometimes those teams give us problems but tonight out kids played right through it.”

South City did their best to try and make it a ballgame in the second half. They found their range from the outside, connecting three times from beyond the arc to put together their best offensive quarter. But every time the Warriors would cut the lead to the point where a comeback seemed somewhat believable, the Panthers would answer. The lead was 20 by the end of three and the fourth quarter appeared to be a mere formality.

South City’s last stand came to start the fourth. They began the frame on a 7-0 run to trim the lead to 13 behind the continued hot-shooting of Warriors junior Marquis Johnson, who the night before scored 19 second-half points.

But Bailey and Nick Loew, Shaffer’s replacement in the PAL tournament’s later rounds, were there to respond. The Panthers only scored six buckets in the second half, but they were a near-perfect 12-for-13 from the free throw line.

"For us seniors, it was our last guaranteed game here,” Bailey said. "It was a great win (and) we’re not ready for this season to be over yet. At the beginning of the year we had four goals - this was one of them.”

"If we played in the first half like we did in the second it might have been a different ball game,” Chevez said. "Burlingame is the class of the PAL and that’s what everybody shoots for — to be up there like them. That’s what we’ll try to get to next year, hopefully.”

In their four PAL tournament victories, the Panthers have outscored their opponents 52-40 in the final.