Paly varsity basketball coach Peter Diepenbrock was hugging everything in sight including players and coaches Friday night, after his boys took down the Archbishop Mitty Monarchs, 45-42, and became Central Coast Section (CCS) champions for the second time in three years.
The win was even more emotional due to the fact they weren’t playing with junior point guard Jeremy Lin. The night before the championships Lin was playing a pick-up game of basketball at the YMCA. After being fouled from behind going up for a lay-up, Lin landed on his ankle badly. Late Thursday night Diepenbrock received a call explaining the situation, and he learned later that Lin could not play in the championship game.
"I felt really bad for Jeremy," Diepenbrock said. This game would have been Lin’s first starting CCS
Championship appearance.
"We had practiced with Jeremy all year, and we had played all year to get to this point with him," said senior forward Brian Baskauskas, who led his team throughout the game with 24 points said. "It was devastating to find out he wasn’t going to play."
Going into the game, Diepenbrock knew what had to be done to stop the aggressive Mitty team. "We needed to do a good job keeping them away from the basket," Diepenbrock said. "We couldn’t let them get easy
lay-ups or dunks."
With such outstanding players as senior forward Alex Okafor, and freshman center Drew Gordan, Mitty was one of the toughest opponents of the year for the 29-1 Vikings.
Though Gordan certainly was not the most experienced player on the court, the 6’7" 14-year-old center pulled off two dunks in the first half, and 10 points in the game. "[Gordan] is very athletic. "He can dunk, rebound and is a great player," Baskauskas said.
In the first half, as Gordon pumped up the Mitty crowd, Paly junior forward Cooper Miller kept the Vikings in the game with eight points. "[Miller] got some key rebounds down the stretch, and played great
defense," Lin said.
With the score 23-20 in favor of the Monarchs, both teams headed to the locker rooms. "We weren’t doing a good job guarding Okafor, and we needed to change that," Diepenbrock said to critique the Vikings’ first half performance.
"We had to get used to playing without Jeremy, and we had to get used to the court, because it was 10 feet longer than the ones we usually play on," Baskauskas said.
Both the Vikings and Monarchs came out pumped up for the second half, but the Vikings put together big plays to pull the game away.
The Viking comeback began when they tied the game off of a lay-up by senior forward Martin Mouton, who was fouled and hit his free-throw. Mouton pulled in seven very important rebounds in the game to help the
Vikings pull through.
The score was 27-27 with 3:09 left in the third quarter and slowly the momentum shifted in Paly’s favor.
With 4:05 in the final quarter, the Vikings went on a 9-0 run, including two steals by Baskauskas, and three assists from junior guard Brad Lehman, who was playing instead of Lin. "It was tough for Brad, but he helped carry the team to victory," Lin said. Lin, who sat on the sidelines during the game, limped around to give high-five’s and show his teammates support.
A final effort to regain control of the game proved unsuccessful for the Monarchs, who pulled within 3 of the Vikes with 3.4 seconds left on the clock.
Unfortunately for Mitty, Paly had the ball, and from the out-of-bounds line, under Paly’s own basket, Brian Baskauskas chucked a ball into the air to Miller, who jumped over his opponent, and brought the ball down to end the game 45-42.
"The second half is our half," Baskauskas said. "With our defensive intensity, the opposing team needs to play well for all 32 minutes."
The No. 1 seed Vikings play at 7:00 p.m. at home Tuesday night in the first round of the CIF NorCal/State Championship Tournament against the No. 8 seed Golden Valley High School of Merced.