APTOS — Swish. Swish. Swish. Swish.
Santa Cruz High conducted an orchestra of sweet swish music on Saturday night en route to a 71-59 win over St. Francis High in the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League tournament championship game.
Hand in their face?
Didn’t matter.
Wild step-back jumper?
You betcha.
At moments, it looked like the Cardinals (22-4) were shooting against air.
“They started shooting and I wasn’t sure if we were at Aptos or Oracle,” said St. Francis head coach Ed Kelly. “If they shoot the ball like that from the perimeter, they’re virtually impossible to beat. We kind of ran into the buzzsaw tonight.”
Santa Cruz nailed eight of its 11 3-pointers in the first half to turn the third meeting against rival St. Francis (19-5) into a blowout and capture the league title outright.
The teams had split the two-game SCCAL regular season series. Each team won at home, but on a neutral site on Saturday, Santa Cruz separated and St. Francis was never able to close the gap.
“This is great. Best win of the year, by far,” said Santa Cruz sophomore guard Zavier Hill-Kemp. “It’s a big statement. They all wanted us to lose. Everyone in the county wanted us to lose.”
Hill-Kemp came off the bench midway through the first quarter and hit his first shot from deep to give Santa Cruz a 13-11 lead. He swished his second 3-pointer just a minute later to put the Cardinals up 16-13 heading into the second.
It was a sign of things to come.
He deposited three more 3-pointers in the second, senior point guard Max Dehart nailed another and the suffocating Santa Cruz defense forced St. Francis into six uncharacteristic turnovers to build a 16-point lead.
They led 36-25 at the half.
“I was just trying to stay focused,” Hill-Kemp said. “I locked in and made sure I was prepared to do whatever I needed to do to help the team win.”
Hill-Kemp finished with 17 points, Dehart added 19 points, five assists and four steals and junior forward Robert Bishop chipped in 14 points and five rebounds.
Senior forward Jason Gallo kept the Sharks competitive in the second half by pouring in a game-high 23 points, but Santa Cruz pressured St. Francis into seven more turnovers in the third quarter.
The Cardinals led 54-36 heading into the final stanza, and upped the advantage to 21 in the opening minutes of the fourth.
“Their defense forced us to play at a tempo that we weren’t very comfortable with, and we had a couple of spurts where we lost some composure and didn’t take care of it like we have in the first two games,” Kelly said. “That let them really widen this thing out a little bit.’
St. Francis senior forward Chase Watkins added 15 points, six rebounds and a pair of dunks in the second half.
Junior guard Andrew Seymour chipped in 12 points.
Watkins’ slam with a little more than three minutes left brought the Sharks within 13, but Santa Cruz’s onslaught continued on the following possession, as Dehart swished another 3-pointer.
Saturday’s defeat was the Sharks’ second worst of the season. They lost to San Mateo High by 19 in mid-December, but that defeat came with Watkins on the bench because of injury.
Even at full strength, St. Francis wasn’t able to keep pace with Santa Cruz’s hot streak.
“We’ve lost a couple of games but this is the first time they’ve been beaten this badly,” Kelly said. “We’ll have the veterans talk to the new guys and make sure they get back to having their feet on the ground.”
St. Francis will now try to defend its Central Coast Section Division V championship starting next week.
The Sharks were given the top seed in the bracket, and will be off until Saturday when they face the winner of No. 8 Nueva and No. 9 Shasta Summit at Pinewood School.
