Newark High's Run Ends in NorCal Final

For a while in the fourth quarter, Newark Memorial High appeared to have the Northern California Division II boys basketball title in their grasp.

But it slipped away from the Cougars in the final four minutes as the defending state champion Archbishop Mitty High of San Jose took over.

The Monarchs went on a 12-1 run over a span of a little over two minutes to turn a 52-48 deficit into a 60-53 lead with about a minute and a half to go. They wound up taking a hard-earned 63-58 victory at Power Balance Pavilion in Sacramento.

The Monarchs (30-3) go on to play the Southern California champions, La Costa Canyon, next Friday for the state title.

For Newark Memorial head coach Craig Ashmore and his Cougars, it was an opportunity missed, even though in the end Mitty’s 6-foot-8 star Aaron Gordon proved too much to handle, getting the Cougars in foul trouble while scoring 21 points and grabbing 15 rebounds, both game highs.

“They (Mitty) made a couple of baskets there, a couple of tip-ins, and we missed a couple of baskets, then they got to a couple of loose balls and turned them into fast breaks the other way,” Ashmore said. “We outplayed them in the second half except for about two minutes there.”

Getting into foul trouble hurt, too, the coach said, but he credited much of that to Gordon, the younger brother of University of New Mexico star Drew Gordon.  Ranked the top high-school junior prospect in the nation by some, Gordon made a couple of big tip-ins while being fouled as the Cougars tried to contest every ball passed to him.

It could have been a lot worse for Newark, though, as Gordon converted only six of 18 foul shots.

Still, Damien Banford, Newark’s bulky 6-foot-6 sophomore, picked up two fouls in the first quarter, sat all the second quarter and wound up playing much of the fourth quarter with four fouls.

“He had his hands full with Gordon,” Ashmore conceded.

Indeed, Yusuf Farouqi, not a starter but in the regular rotation, fouled out in the final minute, and three other Cougars, like Banford, finished the game with four fouls.

“It was a great season,” Ashmore said after the loss that left the Cougars’ final mark at 28-5. “Sometimes you lose sight of that. We felt that we could beat them. In our minds we really thought that.

“But credit Mitty. They are a great team. Our kids embraced that challenge and played hard all game. We just didn’t quite get the job done, even though for much of the game we did.”  

Still, when Casey Norris popped a three from the top of the key early in the fourth quarter, the Cougars had a 45-39 lead, and a big upset appeared to be possible.

That followed a third quarter in which Newark appeared it might be taking over the game, outscoring Mitty 19-12 to turn a 25-23 halftime deficit into a 42-37 edge heading into the final eight minutes.

Norris led the Cougars with 17 points and sophomore guard Joey Frenchwood added 14 points while Sultan Siddiq came off the bench to net 11 points.

But the senior Norris said afterward he felt mainly “disappointment.”

“It was a pretty good season, but we felt we had the talent to win a state championship,” Norris said. “We just didn’t get it done… A lot of things happened to cause that. We missed some easy shots, we got into foul trouble and we gave up some easy shots at the other end.”

After going 8-for-17 from the field in the third quarter, the Cougars looked to have turned the game around, but Mitty held them to 3-for-16 shooting in the fourth quarter. A lot of it was clutch, tough defense by the Monarchs, but the Cougars, in contrast to the rest of the season, appeared to be the tired team down the stretch, missing some shots they usually made.

Mitty coach Tim Kennedy was proud of how his team withstood the pressure the Cougars brought all game.

 “It just shows the mental toughness of our guys,” Kennedy said. “We get the other teams’ best shot night in and night out.”

About Newark, Kennedy said, “They kept sending waves at us. They got us out of our rhythm and it wasn’t just Norris who hurt us. They had several guys.  We got them in foul trouble, but they kept sending more guys.”

Mitty’s Gordon said: “They were sending a lot of guys at me and I did a pretty poor job of trusting my team.”

He did much better, though, when it counted the most, at crunch time.