KELSEYVILLE >> It’s rare enough for a Lake County basketball team competing in Division IV of the North Coast Section playoffs to draw a first-round home game let alone two by the same school on the same night.
That’s the situation tonight in Kelseyville where the Knights are hosting a first-round doubleheader – the boys are taking on Healdsburg at 6:30 p.m. and the girls are playing Fortuna at 8 p.m. The similarities don’t stop there. If both Kelseyville teams win, they’ll hit the road to face the same high school – St. Joseph Notre Dame of Alameda – in Saturday’s quarterfinal round.
“I can’t remember the last time the boys hosted a home playoff game,” Kelseyville boys head coach Scott Conrad said. “It should be a lot of fun.”
Both Kelseyville teams enter play tonight coming off banner regular seasons. The boys (22-5) won the outright North Central League I championship before stumbling against St. Helena 57-50 in the opening round of the league’s postseason tournament last weekend in Ukiah. The girls (25-3) shared the NCL I title with Lower Lake but won the postseason tournament, which probably helped them in their bid to secure homecourt advantage tonight.
“After a great fall sports season, the kids have continued that success through the winter,” Conrad said of what has been a banner 2016-17 sports season at the high school.
During the fall sports season, the Knights won league titles in volleyball and boys soccer, reached the playoffs in volleyball, football, boys soccer and girls soccer, and sent a cross country runner – Andre Williams – to the state meet. So far this winter they’ve won two league titles in basketball while their wrestling team finished third in the Coastal Mountain Conference race behind powerhouses Willits and Lower Lake.
“Kelseyville is buzzing,” Conrad said of the excitement leading up to tonight’s playoff doubleheader.
“There should be a pretty good crowd,” Kelseyville girls head coach Jim Hale said. “I don’t think Fortuna will bring that many fans down and Healdsburg’s fans will probably leave after their game.”
Playing at home is no guarantee you’ll win — ask Hale, whose Knights hit the road for a first-round game last year and spoiled the night for a lot of Del Norte fans with a 50-45 victory in Crescent City.
Hale has a pretty good scout on the Fortuna team he’ll face tonight thanks in large part to other NCL I coaches who have played the Huskies or scouted them this season and last.
Middletown defeated Fortuna 59-43 in a first-round playoff me a year ago at Middletown and Clear Lake dropped a 51-33 decision to the Huskies in late December at the Holiday Classic tournament in Fort Bragg.
“Middletown gave us last year’s game film to look at and Kory (Reynolds, Clear Lake coach) gave me a scouting report from his game,” Hale said of the 17-7 Huskies, who enter play tonight as the No. 10 seed in the Division IV field to Kelseyville’s No. 7.
“We’ve had nice little network of league coaches help me out,” Hale said.
As for the Fortuna team that walks into the Kelseyville gym tonight, Hale said the Huskies have talented post players but believes the Knights match up well based on their post play and overall team quickness.
The Knights enter the game with minor bumps and bruises but nothing serious.
“We looked pretty good in practice Monday,” Hale said before taking his team through Tuesday’s practice session.
If the Lady Knights beat Fortuna, they’ll face No. 2 seed St. Joseph Notre Dame (24-4) in the quarterfinals, a team they lost to 70-58 last season during a late December non-league game at Kelseyville. St. Joseph Notre Dame won the Division V crown a year ago before losing in the NorCal Division V championship game.
For the ninth-seeded Kelseyville boys tonight against eighth-seeded Healdsburg (18-7), the Knights face one of the taller and more athletic lineups they’ve seen this season as well as a Greyhounds team that owns a 76-64 win at Cloverdale.
“There’s definitely going to be a battle-tested team coming into our gym,” Conrad said of the Greyhounds, who have a tall front line anchored by 6-for-4 senior forward Landon Courtman.
“They are tall like St. Helena but are more athletic and they have a couple of good shooters to along with that,” Conrad said. “We have our work cut out. We need to rebound, box out and hold them to one shot.”
Kelseyville clinched its NCL I championship with a 60-54 win at home against St. Helena on Feb. 14 but then lost to the Saints in the opening round of the league tournament two days later in Ukiah. Conrad said the Knights didn’t play well in either game, but that the 57-50 loss in the tournament might have been just what his team needed heading into the section playoffs.
“We had guys banged up, sick … it might have been a blessing,” Conrad said. “Even if we had won that tournament, we would probably still be in the same situation, playing Healdsburg in the first round except maybe we would be the eighth seed and they would be the ninth.”
The Knights have had a fair share of success against taller teams this season. They played St. Helena three times and won two of the three, split their league meetings with Cloverdale and its standout center Jayson McMillan, and beat a good Woodside Priory (19-5) team 61-51 in a tournament at Pebble Beach in early December.
If the Knights — boys and girls — fail to advance tonight it will mark the final game for the team’s seniors. For the boys, that’s Kyle Ellis, Dwayne Yiggins, Ean Valenzuela and Logan Barrick. For the girls, it’s Maddie West, Carli Mendonca, Taylor Hale, Alma Perez, Kia Kohler and Haleigh Meyer.
Speaking of Ellis, a four-year varsity veteran, he needs seven points to reach 1,500 for his career. He enters play with 1,493 points, fifth on the list of the county’s all-time scoring leaders. Perez, a three-year varsity veteran for the girls, is 24th on that same list with 1,140 points.
Kelseyville notes: After returning from the All-League meeting in Cloverdale on Monday night, Hale had a close brush with danger as a pine tree toppled onto his house, breaking through the roof and ending up in his bedroom. No one was hurt but his hone sustained a fair amount of damage, both from the fallen tree and rain pouring through the hole in the roof.
“I got home, went to bed and had just closed my eyes when it happened,” Hale said. “Stuff ended up all over me.”
Hale said he interpreted it as a good sign going into tonight’s playoff game because he’s still able to coach the Knights. If the tree had fallen a few more feet in a different direction, he might have sustained injuries or worse.
