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MORAGA — It was just Wednesday evening that Aidan Mahaney was talking about winning a second state title in as many years. By Thursday morning, those dreams had evaporated, as had the sophomore star’s time sharing a backcourt with his older brother.
Campolindo coach Steven Dyer received word from the California Interscholastic Federation that the state championships set for this weekend at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento had been canceled, meaning their season was over, too. And with it, the high-school careers of Campolindo’s four seniors, including Carter Mahaney.
“I know Aidan’s really broken up about it right now,” Dyer said on Thursday. “He lives and breathes basketball, so this has been a really tough day for him.”
For weeks, Aidan has been cherishing what will likely be his last time playing with Carter, who is off to play at Northern Arizona next year. Aidan has two more years at Campo and offers from Arizona, Stanford and Cal already in hand. Together, they had led the seventh-seeded Cougars to wins over bigger schools, private schools and higher seeds to reach the Division I title game.
In the huddle during each of those playoff games, Dyer’s message has been to treat each game like it was their last. That prophecy came true — thanks not to their performance on the court but a pandemic sweeping the globe — less than 48 hours before they were supposed to face Ribet Academy for the Division I state title.
”When it’s the game you’ve been preparing for all year, it kind of sucks to get it taken away,” Carter said after hearing the news Thursday.
It was this time last year that Aidan was putting an exclamation mark on an impressive freshman season with a dazzling performance in Sacramento. This year, they had a chance for their second title in two years playing together.
Now, rather than sending his brother out with a second state title, Aidan is left to reflect on the past two years.
“Each game, each moment, each practice, each second,” Aidan said Wednesday evening. “Just getting a good feel for what it’s like and remembering it. Because these are the moments you look back at when your basketball career is over.”
What started with one-on-one battles in their driveway ended in the resurgence of the Campolindo program. Dyer took the head job when Carter was a freshman. The year prior, the Cougars had gone 14-14. In the four years since, Campolindo has won at least 20 games and earned NorCal playoff berths each season.
Now, Dyer has one of the most coveted recruits in Northern California on his roster for two more years.
Aidan, a four-star point guard according to 247Sports, remembers those pick-up games in front of their house. The bloody knees. The scraped elbows. Their dad, Mark, would roll a ball between them and let them loose.
“No one wanted to lose,” Aidan remembered.
And now?
“I’m gonna say if we played now, I would win. I’m sure he would say he would win,” Aidan said.
Carter leaves Campolindo as the winningest player to ever come through the program, but without a chance to add one more ‘W,’ his 95th, to his record. It’s the other three seniors — Rex Curtis, Tyler Smith, Peter O’Donnell — whose competitive basketball careers have ended, just like that, that Carter was thinking of Thursday.
After the CIF delivered the news Thursday morning, Dyer gathered his team one last time for a lunchtime meeting.
“It was pretty emotional,” Carter said. “We were all super sad. I still have some more basketball ahead of me, but the other three seniors, that was their last game of organized basketball. It just hurts to see them go out like that. We would have loved to send them off with a state championship.”
