OAKLAND - Oakland forward Isaac Johnson (2) flies in for a layup in the fourth quarter. Oakland and Fremont-Oakland played a high school basketball game at Oakland High School in Oakland, Calif. on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024 (Joseph Dycus/Bay Area News Group)
SAN JOSE — Oakland High scored the first 14 points of the game, never trailed, and held off Bellarmine at the end in a 57-54 victory Saturday in a CIF Northern California Division II boys basketball semifinal.
In an uncanny replication of what occurred last year, Oakland will play at Oakland Tech on Tuesday with a trip to the state final at stake.
The Wildcats lost to Tech three times this season, but that’s the same scenario as last year when Oakland went 0-3 against Oakland Tech before the two rivals met in the NorCal Division III final, with Oakland winning at Laney College, and then capturing the state crown in Sacramento by defeating Buena-Ventura.
The Wildcats can only hope that history repeats itself, that the fourth time proves to be the charm, once again.
“One thing I can say about Tech is that they make you play for 32 minutes,” Oakland coach Orlando Watkins said. “I think my team in the past hasn’t played 32 minutes against Tech. Hopefully this time we do..”
“We’ve been there before,” senior Anthony Lacy said. “The gameplan stays the same. It’s just a matter of us executing and not beating ourselves. It’s been pretty heated, all three games have been really close. So it’s going to be a good one.”.
After Oakland (25-8) got off to that 14-0 start Saturday, Bellarmine righted itself and scored the final seven points of the first quarter. The Bells got as close as three in the second quarter before Oakland went back up by eight at halftime. They cut Oakland’s lead to 44-42 in the third quarter and to 50-48 in the fourth, but were never able to draw even.
“Julian Gospich hurt his meniscus in our shoot around this morning,” Bellarmine coach Alex Sarrett said. “He’d been playing real well, averaging 11 on the season, and gave us our second element on our high-low. So we were kind of out of rhythm, out of sync to start the game. But our guys scrapped until the end. I’m really proud of the effort.”
Bellarmine played a 2-3 zone, its preferred defense this season, virtually the entire game.
“We run into a lot of zone,” Watkins said. “We were prepared for the zone, we had a couple of wrinkles we threw in today. Over the year we’ve gotten smarter and better at attacking it.”
Isaac Johnson and Rohm Neal scored 12 points apiece to pace Oakland. Neal hit a pair of free throws with 16 seconds left to make it a five-point lead and allow his team and the sizable group of supporters that made the trip to San Jose, breathe a sigh of relief. Until that point Oakland had gone 1 of 10 at the foul line in the second half.
“If I told you we shoot free throws every day religiously, you wouldn’t believe it by our percentage,” Watkins said. “But as long as we keep making them when it counts, I’m a happy guy.”
Nick Corbett, Bellarmine’s 6-7 senior post, led all scorers with 17 points.
“We got down 14-0 and we kept trying to crawl back,” he said. “Our goal, Oakland’s a really great team, if we lose, we lose, we just wanted to leave it all on the court and I think we definitely did tonight.”.
“Nick has been a warrior all year long,” Sarrett said. “You look at Nick’s jersey, it’s got blood on it every game. I’m going to really miss him next year.”
Sophomore wing Will Corbett, Nick’s younger brother, scored 16 and fueled Bellarmine’s late rally with his 3-point shooting..
“They are a special brother combo,” Sarrett said.
Oakland and Tech has also been a special combo for the past two years, and after playing last season’s final at Laney College, Watkins and Wildcats will have to travel to Oakland Tech with a spot in the state championship on the line.
Originally published at Glenn Reeves