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PALO ALTO — Momentum traded hands multiple nights Tuesday night in a match of familiar foes during the Central Coast Section Division I boys basketball quarterfinals.
It favored Mountain View immediately after tip-off and down the stretch in an upset bid at top-seeded Palo Alto, but the potential game-winning shot clanked off the rim as time expired.
Palo Alto 45, Mountain View 43.
“I’m proud of our guys, first and foremost, just their effort,” Mountain View coach Kevin Mack said. “We could’ve really easily folded the tent up and kind of called it a day when we went down 13. If you told me tonight that we had a shot to tie or win the game at the end, I would’ve taken it.”
Here’s the video https://t.co/GTi1yu9kEL pic.twitter.com/qVuw19qp5B
— Vytas Mazeika (@VytasMazeika) February 26, 2020
Paly (21-4), the unbeaten Santa Clara Valley Athletic League De Anza Division champion, won both previous meetings against the Spartans — 55-42 at home, 58-45 on the road.
No. 9 Mountain View (16-11) needed a pair of playoff victories to force a third matchup, while the Vikings earned a bye into the quarterfinals.
All that time off possibly hurt Paly, which trailed early 10-1. But without requiring a timeout to recover, the Vikings reeled off 11 straight points to close out the first quarter and embarked on a 18-2 run.
“Hat’s off to our seniors,” Paly coach Jeff LaMere said. “They’ve played in some big playoff games before, so they’re able to have that experience and carry us on to the next round.”
Two of those seniors are Matthew Marzano and Ryan Purpur, who accounted for 11 of the team’s points during that spurt.
Marzano led the Vikings with 16 points, while Purpur and fellow senior Jamir Shepard added 11 and 10, respectively.
“Marzano is the key to our team, of course, which is why teams try to take him away,” LaMere said. “And he makes plays offensively, he makes plays defensively. That’s why he’s the MVP of our league.”
Paly, which led 24-20 at the half, built itself a cushion in the third quarter by attacking the paint and grabbing offensive rebounds.
Entering the final period, Mountain View trailed 38-25.
“It’s two teams that know each other really well and what they’re going to do,” Mack said. “We came out with a lot of energy, but we had spurts where we just couldn’t find easy shots. It definitely was a game of runs, that’s for sure.”
The Spartans still trailed by double digits with 3:55 left in the fourth quarter, 45-34.
“We just grind the down as best as we can,” LaMere said. “And we talk about playing the game possession by possession, and I think we did that tonight.”
But while Paly went cold the rest of the way, Mountain View went on another hot streak.
Jailen Daniel-Dalton, a 6-foot-4 senior, drained a 3-pointer for the first dagger. Then Arvin Bahar, a 6-2 junior, hit his fourth shot from beyond arc, followed by a three-point play the old-fashioned way with 1:32 left to get within 45-43..
Bahar finished with a game-high 19 points, while Daniel-Dalton contributed 12.
Paly missed a couple of free throws to ice the game, but managed to pull down a number of offensive rebounds to run off nearly the remaining 92 seconds.
That left Mountain View with only one chance to pull off the upset, but a corner trey at the buzzer didn’t ring true.
“They made a run at the start of the game and a run at the end of the game,” LaMere said. “Fortunately we sandwiched some good play in the middle and ran the clock out enough at the end.”
