The Mountain View High boys basketball team has shown it can succeed without scoring a lot of points, winning three regular-season games when held under 40. The second-seeded Spartans weren’t able to get away with that in the Central Coast Section Division I semifinals against No. 3 Menlo-Atherton.
Bothered by the Bears’ pressure defense, Mountain View set a new season low for points in Thursday’s 46-34 playoff loss. The host Spartans committed a whopping 22 turnovers, shot 30% from the field and didn’t score more than nine points in any quarter.
“We just fundamentally on offense struggled tonight,” Mountain View coach Kevin Mack said. “We weren’t being smart – we didn’t make good decisions and value the basketball very well.”
Despite all that, the Spartans entered the fourth quarter up 27-26 after producing the final four points of the third: William Van Zuylen scored inside and Max Telkamp swished a baseline jumper.
Menlo-Atherton pulled ahead by two just more than a minute into the fourth, but Mountain View (19-7 overall) quickly tied the score at 29 on Joey Peir’s drive through the middle with 6:41 left.
The Bears (19-6) countered with a 12-2 run – scoring twice on putbacks – to pull away. Joe Brown’s 3-pointer sliced the Spartans’ deficit to 41-34 with 42 seconds remaining, but they failed to get any closer. Mountain View missed its next three shots from beyond the arc, while Menlo-Atherton went 5-for-6 from the foul line to seal the victory.
“I thought we had weathered the storm,” Mack said. “I mean, shoot, we were up one at the end of the third quarter, and I didn’t think we were playing very well on offense. Defensively we were playing well and we were playing hard, so credit our guys for their effort. But we’re not going to beat a team like that unless we’re fundamentally sound.”
Mountain View played its best basketball over an 80-second stretch late in the second quarter. The Spartans scored seven straight points – on Brown’s drive and Peir’s turnaround jumper and deep straightaway 3 – to tie the game at 18 by halftime.
Peir finished with a team-high nine points. Brown added seven, as did Patrick Kane, who buried a pair of 3s in the opening quarter.
While a semifinal loss would mean the end of the season for most teams in the section, Mountain View gets to play on; the Spartans learned Friday that they will participate in the Northern California playoffs. The CCS receives three at-large berths in the regional tournament; the committee chose to send Mountain View, Carlmont and Santa Cruz.
“The guys are pretty excited,” Mack said. “They were down (Thursday) night, but this is a huge shot of adrenaline.”
Placed in Division IV, eighth-seeded Mountain View hosts No. 9 Athenian (19-4) 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 1. The winner visits top-seeded Enterprise (20-8) of Redding in the semifinals at 6 p.m. Thursday.
Lancers also make NorCal
St. Francis, which went 0-3 in the CCS Open round-robin tournament, has qualified for NorCals as the seventh seed in Division II.
The Lancers (15-11) host No. 10 University (25-7) at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the quarterfinals. The winner faces No. 2 Branson (25-5) or No. 15 Granite Bay (19-13) at 6 p.m. Thursday at the home of the higher seed.
Eagles end season with tough loss
Los Altos’ season ended in heartbreaking fashion Tuesday in the CCS Division I quarterfinals. Menlo-Atherton beat the sixth-seeded Eagles 57-55 on a last-second shot from Doug Adams, who made a layin off an inbound pass under Los Altos’ basket.
The Eagles (19-6) had just erased a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter to tie the game at 55 on a drive by Andrew Reilly with 27 seconds left. Reilly totaled 23 points and teammate Jake Skaggs had 24.
