OAKLAND – The Oakland Tech girls basketball team is headed to its third straight CIF Northern Regional championship game after a 72-34 domination of Priory on Saturday night.
Oakland Tech won the NorCal Division IV title in 2019 and then proceeded to win the state championship. In 2020, Tech was the NorCal Division II champion, but the state championships were canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. The CIF did not hold Northern Regional or state championships in 2021 for the same reason.
This year, third-seeded Oakland Tech (19-11) advances to the NorCal final in Division III. Tech coach Leroy Hurt said that his team was not respected in where it was placed in the NorCal playoffs. He pointed out his team’s non-league schedule.
“Salesian, Clovis West, O’Dowd twice, Lincoln of Stockton,” said Hurt calmly. Then he pointed to his team’s scores in this year’s Northern Regional.
On Saturday, Tech led No. 7 Priory 26-3 at the end of the first quarter and 50-14 at halftime. After the third quarter ended with Tech holding a 68-27 lead, there was a running clock in the fourth quarter.
Oakland Tech defeated No. 6 Dixon 78-38 in Thursday’s quarterfinals. In the first round, Tech defeated No. 4 Homestead 59-43.
“We look forward to going to see the one seed,” Hurt said.
Oakland Tech will travel to face No. 1 Lincoln of Lincoln on Tuesday at 6 p.m. in the NorCal Division III final. Lincoln (30-3) defeated No. 12 Central-Fresno 38-35 in the other semifinal.
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It would be very difficult to have a better first quarter than the one Tech produced against visiting Priory (16-10) on Saturday.
Tech, which never trailed, took a 5-0 lead on Mari Somvichian’s first three-pointer of the night. The junior scored 12 of her game-high 19 points in the first period. A drive for a lay-in by Priory’s Valentina Saric narrowed Oakland Tech’s lead to 7-3 with five minutes, 33 seconds left in the first quarter, but Oakland Tech scored the last 19 points of the quarter for a 26-3 advantage, then outscored the Panthers 24-11 in the second quarter.
“I feel like we were really clicking on all cylinders today, sharing the ball,” said Somvichian, one of six players on this season’s squad that were on Tech’s roster for the 2020 NorCal final. “A lot of good things happen when no one cares who gets credit.”
“We made shots,” said Hurt about the first quarter. “Defensively, we didn’t give 14 (Saric) anything easy.”
On Dec. 10, Oakland Tech defeated Priory 67-43, and Saric had a team-high 20 points. The 6-foot senior shooting guard was limited to two points in the first quarter Saturday and four points in the game. Carmela Fontes paced Priory with 10 points.
Besides Somvichian, Erin Sellers (13 points) and Sophia Askew-Goncalves (11 points) also scored in double figures for Tech. Askew-Goncalves also had six rebounds and three assists, and teammate Nia Hunter had a balanced stat line with eight points, five rebounds, four assists and two steals. Shomira Bidaye had eight points and five rebounds for Priory.
