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2024

Boys basketball: San Domenico surges back to NorCal title game

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The San Domenico boys basketball team finally got the surge it needed as it started the fourth quarter against Oakwood. Saturday’s momentum carried them straight into the Northern California Regional championship game.

“I wanted this game,” San Domenico senior Drew Morehouse said after the Panthers’ hard-fought 49-36 victory over No. 3 Oakwood of Walnut Creek on Saturday. “I knew the kind of energy we would need to have. We knew Oakwood was going to be tough.”

The No. 2 Panthers (20-11) are scheduled to travel and play top-seeded Athenian of Danville (26-8) in Tuesday’s NorCal Division-V championship. Athenian edged San Domenico 51-48 on Dec. 16.

“We’re taking this one step at a time,” San Domenico head coach Tyler Gaffaney said. “Our goal is to be there at the end of the season. If we start looking ahead, that’s when we might slip up.”

San Domenico’s gym displays the pennant from the Panthers’ last appearance in the NorCal D-V championship in March 2020. As the third seed, San Domenico and then-head coach Mike Fulton defeated No. 1 Pierce, 58-37. The COVID-19 pandemic cancelled the State championship game days before the Panthers were scheduled to play for the title.

It’s been a long four years for the Panthers since then. The 2020-21 season was virtually wiped out as San Domenico went 0-7. The next year, they went 4-19 overall and finished sixth in the Bay Counties League West.

San Domenico finished 22-9 overall last season, with a first-round loss to Half Moon Bay in the NorCal D-IV playoffs.

“Watching the growth of this entire program has been amazing,” Morehouse said. “Going from my freshman year when we didn’t win any games to getting to the Northern California playoffs this year has been phenomenal.”

From the start, Saturday’s contest felt tighter than the two NorCal playoff games earlier in the week, even though the San Domenico’s strategy remained the same: clamp down on defense, force turnovers and then get the ball to Gavin Early. The Panthers executed that plan wire to wire.

Early finished with a game-high 17 points and 12 rebounds for the Panthers, while Omar Williams added nine points, including a pair of 3-pointers. Kris Jakstas added six points, and Morehouse tallied five points and five rebounds.

“We won ugly tonight,” Gaffaney said. “It was fun when everything was flowing, but it wasn’t easy.”

San Domenico never trailed in the game, but Oakwood (15-15) never let the Panthers run away until midway through the fourth quarter.

Oakwood was misfiring from outside the paint, but still managed to keep the score close, as the Hawks’ Marko Milentijevic hit a 3-pointer to close the first period. The two teams were almost neck-and-neck through three quarters, as San Domenico took a 31-27 lead into the final frame.

Kris Jakstas hit a pair of baskets as part of the Panthers’ six-point run to open the fourth quarter. A 3-pointer from Williams moments later gave San Domenico its biggest lead of the game to that point, 42-28.

“This game didn’t come easy,” Gaffaney said. “We were smooth on offense. It was stop and start, but our defense carried us. That’s a big part of our team identity. It was a total team effort.”

From the start, the Panthers focused on tying up the Hawks’ leading scorer, Milentijevic, who finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds against Stephen Song and Ika Jokhadze in San Domenico’s man-to-man defense.

The Panthers’ Chidera Onyeukwu grabbed six points and six rebounds as he battled in the paint against the Hawks’ big man, Vidal Nzoyen, who finished with eight points.

Oakwood, which put up nine points in each quarter, also got scoring from Isaac Castaneda (9 points) and Anthony Felix (7).

“We looked at Marko and we wanted to make him work as hard as possible,” Gaffaney said. “All due credit to Stephen Song and Ika Jokhadze, who did a great job against Marko. Stephen’s a tremendous defender, as is Ika, but you don’t get a lot of attention for playing great defense. That’s the backbone of our team, though. Even if you miss some shots, you can still win games with defense.”




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