Last-Second Three Keeps Sacred Heart Prep Alive in Bid to Break WCAL's Grip on CCS Open Division Final

Sacred Heart Prep's chance of ending the West Catholic Athletic League's hold on the top of Central Coast Section basketball remains alive after a dramatic finish on Monday night. The Gators beat Sacred Heart Cathedral 61-59 on a 3-pointer that dropped just after the final horn.

Since the CCS Open Division was created in 2012, its championship game has featured only WCAL teams. Sacred Heart Prep, which plays in the West Bay Athletic League, could become the first outsider to reach the final. To do it, the Gators must win at Riordan on Wednesday night.

The scenarios are straightforward. If Sacred Heart Prep loses at Riordan, a San Francisco WCAL school will advance. Sacred Heart Cathedral would get in by beating Menlo-Atherton while the Gators lose at Riordan. If both Sacred Heart schools lose, Riordan would reach the title game for a third consecutive year. On the other side of the bracket, the winner of Wednesday's game between No. 1 Mitty and No. 4 Serra moves on.

Sacred Heart Prep (19-6) is a private school with tuition just over $50,000 a year for high schoolers. Its WBAL league, however, includes only one school with more than 800 students, and Sacred Heart Prep's enrollment of 642 is 340 below that of any WCAL school.

The finish on Monday followed a similar one on Friday, when the Gators opened Open Division pool play with a last-second win over Menlo-Atherton on center Sam Norris's go-ahead and-1 with 2.1 seconds left. "You get a couple of these in a row; you feel like it's supposed to happen," Gators head coach Tony Martinelli said. "Sometimes you've gotta just let players make plays."

Against Sacred Heart Cathedral (14-12), Jerry Mixon Jr. put the Irish up one with a driving floater off the glass with 11.2 seconds left. Sacred Heart Prep did not call a timeout. JP Kerrigan brought the ball up and kicked it to Erick Osterloh at the top of the arc, who swung it to LJ Quattlebaum on the wing. Quattlebaum fed TJ O'Brien in the corner. "I knew I had one more second to kick it, and TJ was more open than I was," said Quattlebaum, who had put the Gators ahead 58-57 on two free throws with 18.9 seconds left. O'Brien said he "peeked at the clock right before I shot it."

Neither team led by more than five points. Sacred Heart Prep took a 40-37 edge into the fourth quarter after outscoring the Irish 14-6 in the third, and led 51-47 with 3:16 remaining. Then Zemaury Erfe drew a charge on O'Brien, and Erfe and Fed Pernell hit back-to-back threes to give the Irish a 53-51 lead with 2:01 left. Norris tied it with 1:28 to go, Mixon answered with a floater, and Kerrigan's fourth three of the night made it 56-55. Fresno State football commit RL Miller put the Irish back in front 57-56 with two free throws before Quattlebaum's foul shots. "It's been a roller coaster like that for a minute," Sacred Heart Cathedral head coach Caesar Smith said. "Kid made a great play at the end of the game."

Michael Manfreda led the Irish with a game-high 17 points and 11 rebounds. Miller scored 12 points and Pernell 11, while Mixon, an Oregon football commit, had nine points and eight rebounds. Norris, a Pomona-Pitzer commit, scored 13 points with 11 rebounds despite going scoreless in the first half. Kerrigan finished with 16 points, and O'Brien added 15 points, eight rebounds and five assists.

The Gators graduated four starters from last year's team, including Division I players Aidan Braccia and Emmer Nichols, yet are one win from a second straight Open Division title game appearance. Last season they lost in overtime to Riordan in a de facto semifinal. "I always believed we had a chance to get back here because of what I saw in the summer and what the guys showed in the fall," Martinelli said.