Final shot never gets off in GHS boys basketball team’s 46-45
home loss to N. Salinas
GILROY – Down by one with 10 ticks left, the Mustang hoopsters came out of their final time-out with the strategy of getting the ball to senior guard Brandt Chacon, who had just drained a clutch three-pointer to give Gilroy a chance.
The team captain and leading scorer got the ball immediately off the inbound from teammate Kyle Loving at half-court. He took his man off the dribble and jumped up for room to release the final shot from inside the three-point arc.
But instead of taking it, Chacon changed his mind at the last second and threw an errant pass behind the back intended for Loving out of bounds. After North Salinas inbounded to run the final second off the clock, the Mustangs could only shake their heads as they came up just short, 46-45.
“(The plan was for him to) create all the way on his own, which he is very good at doing, and get to the ball and try to draw a foul or make the layup or both,” head coach Bud Ogden said. “He had a step, but he had a pretty quick man on him.”
Chacon finished with a team-high 18 points, including 16 of Gilroy’s 24 points in the second half. The Mustangs struggled collectively from the charity stripe, making 12-of-22, while Chacon hit 9-of-10 from the line.
“I don’t think that’s a team we should’ve had to go to the last play on. We match up very well with them, but today their big men proved better than ours,” Ogden said. “Free throws were huge. I don’t emphasize those because I think there’s other things that we should work on, but it seems to me like I missed the boat there.”
Junior swingman Vince Mitre found his range in the first half, netting 11 of his 12 points, but could not maintain his accuracy through the final two quarters.
“We lost him on the bench for a few minutes. We were trying a few other guys and I was like, ‘Let’s get him back in there. He’s the only guy that seems to be able to score.’ Then I told him at halftime I said, ‘You’re going to go and play until you drop,'” said Ogden of Mitre. “He played the whole second half and I don’t think he got tired. He’s showing some of the grit and determination that I thought he would show before the season started.”
Senior guard Ron Colmon tallied seven points, while forwards Steven Good and Kyle Loving scored four points each.
Gilroy slipped to 1-3 in the T-CAL Standings and 3-12 overall, while North Salinas evened its league mark at 2-2 and 13-8 overall.
“This is a hard one to swallow. We had a lot of opportunities and just couldn’t execute,” Ogden said. “In retrospect, I feel like this is a game we should have won, but their big men played very well. We didn’t challenge them to shoot enough (from the outside).”
After scoring the first eight points of the game, the Mustangs fell behind 13-9 by the end of the first quarter. The hosts cut the deficit to 24-22 at the half-time break, but trailed by four going into the final quarter.
“I don’t think we got our fair share of loose balls, which I would usually bet on because we scrap and play real hard,” Ogden said. “You’ve got to shoot better than we did, and I doubt that we shot 50 percent. If we shoot 60 percent, we probably win. I just felt comfortable all the way to the end and, even with 10 seconds to go, that we still had a legitimate shot at winning it.”
The Mustangs look to regroup for Tuesday’s road game against first-place Live Oak at 7 p.m. in Morgan Hill.
JV NOTE: The junior varsity squad, coached by Jay Baksa and Craig Martin, strolled to a 70-43 home victory over Hollister with Ryan Chisolm tallying a team-high 15 points and nine boards, Dominik Wilkins putting in 14 points, and Vinny DeLorenzo delivering 12 points and four assists.
