Just like old times as Los Gatos hoops teams play in front of raucous home crowd

For the first time in a long time, Helm Gym was rocking. 

Playing in front of a raucous home crowd for the first time in recent memory, the Los Gatos High boys and girls basketball teams won’t soon forget their Jan. 28 doubleheader. The boys played Gunn High of Palo Alto and won 58-56 in double overtime, while the girls squad made a furious rally but eventually lost 52-45 in overtime to Palo Alto High. 

In the last two years, Covid has severely reduced the number of spectators for indoor youth sports events. But Los Gatos’ student body made its presence felt with deafening roars every time one of its teams made a shot in the latter stages of the games. 

Senior forward Trent Steiner remembers what it was like to play in front of a huge home crowd, and he couldn’t have been more overjoyed with last Friday’s experience. 

“It was awesome,” he said. “We totally fed off the energy of our home crowd. They get behind us and we really appreciate that.”

Steiner made one of the biggest plays of the game, sprinting a quarter of the court to intercept a Gunn pass just inside mid-court before going in for a layup to make it 56-56 with 35 seconds left in the second overtime period. He then corralled the rebound on Gunn’s ensuing possession and calmly sank two free throws to account for the final score and complete a game-ending 7-0 run. 

Not bad for someone who played only 12 minutes in the game out of a possible 40. The Wildcats trailed 56-51 before Arya Emarlou nailed a huge 3-pointer to set up Steiner’s heroics. Talk about coming through in the clutch: Steiner’s only points of the game came within a 10-second span of the contest. 

Steiner had a terrific season playing defensive end for the football team, and on his steal and layup, he looked like he was on the gridiron as he went into a full-on sprint to intercept the Gunn pass. 

“I saw their best player wide open and was looking at the inbounder and kind of gambled going for the ball,” he said. “I was lucky enough to get it and once I did I made sure to go to the rack because we had no timeouts.”

Emarlou had a team-high 20 points and Max Houghton had 10. The two were clutch in the first OT, as Emarlou drained a 3-pointer and Houghton followed with a terrific dribble-drive, jump-stop layup to make it 49-49 and force the second extra session. 

Luke White finished with four assists and played a team-high 38 minutes, and Tyler Cowan had eight points and seven rebounds for Los Gatos, which kept its Santa Clara Valley League El Camino Division title hopes alive with the victory. 

A four-way logjam atop the standings including Los Gatos, Saratoga, Fremont and Lynbrook means the championship will likely be decided on the final day of the regular-season. 

“This was definitely the biggest game of the year so far,” Steiner said. “The biggest crowd, too, and when it’s a huge crowd like that we’re on a different level. When the gym is bumping, we thrive off that and it helps us a ton.”

The Los Gatos girls followed the boys game and while they fell to Palo Alto in a matchup between two of the top teams in the Central Coast Section—Los Gatos was 16-1 and Palo Alto was 14-1 entering the showdown—they greatly appreciated the support of the home crowd. 

“It’s amazing and wonderful,” Wildcats coach Sara Quilici said. “It’s so special for the girls because we were on such a nice win streak and they’ve been playing so hard and improving so much they really deserved this crowd today. It was really nice we made that run because the crowd was really into it at the end. A lot of times when the girls play second, everybody leaves after the boys varsity game so it was nice to see they stayed and the crowd rewarded them for playing so well this year.”

Los Gatos was thoroughly outplayed for the first three quarters before outscoring Palo Alto 17-3 in the fourth quarter to force overtime. However, the Vikings answered with a 8-1 blitz in the extra session to win comfortably at the end. The Wildcats had all sorts of issues with Palo Alto’s full-court pressure, which scored 21 points off 25 Los Gatos turnovers.

“It’s hard because we don’t have a true point guard and so we have a couple (of ball handlers) that carry the load like Belle Bramer specifically,” Quilici said. 

Bramer had 14 points, Nicole Steiner 11 and Ashley Childers 10 for the Wildcats, whose only other loss of the season came all the way back on Dec. 7 against Silver Creek. Bramer scored nine of her 14 points in the fourth quarter, including a putback with nine seconds left to force overtime, a basket that sent the crowd into a frenzy.

Despite possessing superior size against the Vikings, Los Gatos couldn’t impose its will on the glass for one of the few times all season. Palo Alto also displayed its outstanding perimeter long-range shooting, as it finished with 12 3-point baskets. Palo Alto’s pressure played a role in Los Gatos rushing and missing shots in the lane they normally would make.

“We were rushing so much today that I really wish we could take our time sometimes,” Quilici said. “Especially because we are so much bigger we don’t have to rush that shot. Shaquille O’Neal is not going to come stop that shot, you’ve got all the time in the world, so just take it easy.”

^{Sports editor Emanuel Lee can be reached at el**@we*****.com and (831) 886-0471,
ext. 3958.}