LAKEPORT — The winningest season in Clear Lake High School boys basketball history ended with a 76-58 loss to Lincoln High School of San Francisco on Thursday night in the quarterfinal round of the NorCal Region Division V playoffs at Lakeport.
Clear Lake, the undefeated North Central League I champion and a North Coast Section semifinalist, finishes 27-4 after a 3-2 playoff run. The Cardinals were much more competitive against the Mustangs (23-10) than the final score suggests. In fact, Clear Lake had all the momentum entering the fourth quarter after chopping a 17-point deficit midway through the third period to 54-47 by quarter’s end.
As the fourth quarter opened, center Tj Marcks powered his way inside for a basket that made it 54-49. Lincoln then committed a turnover followed by a foul with Clear Lake already in the bonus. Unfortunately — and this was a theme for Clear Lake head coach Scott De Leon’s squad all night long — the Cardinals couldn’t take advantage at the free-throw line where they finished just 12-for-29. When the front end of a one-and-one was off the mark, Lincoln took control of the game, for good this time, with a 12-0 run capped by back-to-back 3-pointers from forward Gabino Valdivia and senior guard Shakur Blaylock, the Mustangs’ leading scorer with 24 points.
“That was the turning point,” De Leon said. “They (Mustangs) are so explosive. That’s what good teams do. They turned us over and took it to us. We got beat by a better team.”
With a guard-rich squad that possesses the speed, agility and ballhandling ability — not to mention a great shooting touch — that most coaches can only dream about — Lincoln made all the critical shots in the fourth quarter while building as much as a 22-point lead.
During the game-deciding 12-0 run, it wasn’t just one Lincoln player who made the difference. Rather, it was a group effort reminiscent of the way Clear Lake has played all season. Five different Mustangs scored baskets during the run, and from different areas on the floor.
Lincoln’s relentless pressure on defense also forced Clear Lake into several turnovers and bad shots.
“To their credit, their defense put so much pressure on us we couldn’t get our feet set. That split second of indecision they caused hurt our shooting,” De Leon added.
The Cardinals valiantly fought back from double-digit deficits all night. They trailed 30-15 midway through the second quarter only to close to 36-29 by halftime. In the third quarter, the Mustangs pulled away to take a 47-30 lead with five minutes left in the period, but Clear Lake once again came charging back to make it a seven-point game — 54-47 — going into the final period.
De Leon said the Cardinals didn’t panic on either occasion where lesser and more inexperienced teams would have.
“It was going south and it was going south fast, but we regrouped,” De Leon said. “It’s a testament to this team … they just refuse to give up.”
Three Cardinals scored in double figures led by Jaron Mertle with 14 points, Tj Marcks with 12 and Darius Ford with 11. Josh Damiata added nine more.
Besides Blaylock’s 24 points, freshman point guard Jordan Aquino dazzled with 16 points of his own, Valdivia added 11 and Pajri Samhi had nine. Six different Mustangs combined to sink nine 3-pointers compared to only three for the Cardinals, including a Ford trey from somewhere in the stratosphere with 4:12 left in the second quarter that ended an 8-0 Lincoln run and sparked a Clear Lake 8-1 run.
Lincoln, the No. 6 seed in the original 16-team Division V NorCal field, moves on to the semifinals on Saturday and will travel to Dinuba to play the No. 2-seeded Emperors (26-8), who pulled away in the fourth quarter to beat No. 7 Argonaut 62-49 on Thursday night in another quarterfinal-round game.
No. 3 seed Clear Lake won’t play another game but De Leon said the Cardinals accomplished all of their goals and then some this season.
“We did exceed our expectations,” De Leon said. “We wanted to win a league championship … we did that … and we wanted to host a game in the section playoffs … and we hosted two. We also got two NorCal games at home. I’d like to think that the guys had fun. It was an honor to coach them.”
Added De Leon, “I told you after our last game (a 61-56 victory over McClymonds of Oakland on Tuesday in a first-round game) that we needed to play better if we were going to beat Lincoln. We played better, but we just couldn’t match them.”
One of the hardest things any coach has to deal with at season’s end is the loss of seniors who have instrumental to a program’s success, and De Leon said he is losing four especially good ones in Rodrigo Lupercio, Damiata, Marcks and Seth Mix.
“Rodrigo was amazing all year,” he said of his starting point guard. “Josh (starting guard) was undersized, a little slow and has a funky shot, but he has an incredible basketball mind.”
Added De Leon, “Tj excepted his role (reserve center) and I know it wasn’t the role he wanted, but he bought into it and bought into us playing as a group. That was a huge difference. He could have not accepted it and the season would have been a disaster.
“Mix (starting center), talk about a role player. He guards post players and outrebounds them even when he’s giving up 6-8 inches. Just like Josh, he sees the game differently than a lot of players and knows where the ball is going,” De Leon added. “Just like Tj, he accepted the role we had for him and I know he wasn’t always happy about it, but he did what we asked of him.
“They laid it all out there today,” De Leon said of his players. “They did all season.”
Game notes: Other NorCal quarterfinals winners on Thursday were No. 1 seed Mt. Shasta, 69-55 over Pierce, and No. 4 Eastside College Prep, 54-51 over The Nueva School. Mt. Shasta hosts Eastside College Prep in the other NorCal semifinal on Saturday … In the SoCal Region, the top four seeds all advanced to the semifinals with wins on Thursday — No. 1 Foothill, No. 2 Southwest San Diego, No. 3 Orange Vista, and No. 4 Santa Clara. Regional finals are Tuesday at the home sites of the highest surviving seed. The state championship game is March 8 or March 9 at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.
