Scotty Brennan corralled the rebound and ran down the left sideline to the half-court line when the buzzer sounded, and the celebration was on for the Los Gatos High boys basketball team.
Locked in a riveting, white-knuckle, back and forth contest with Christopher High in the championship game of the 39th annual Los Gatos Lions Club Wildcat Shootout on Dec. 9, the Wildcats earned an impressive 56-53 double overtime win over a strong Cougars team.
The players were visibly joyous afterward, and for good reason. A year ago, Los Gatos lost 48-44 to Saratoga in the Wildcat Shootout title game. And more recently, the Wildcats took third place in the Westmont Tournament after a close loss in the semifinals.
“Winning your own tournament, it means something and we talked about it all week,” Los Gatos coach Nick Ward said. “Everyone’s coming in and they want to knock you off. It doesn’t matter who you play in your tournament, they want to knock you off to say, ‘hey, we knocked off the hosts.’ But we had a little extra added fuel because last year we lost in the finals of a tight game. So when we got to tonight we talked to the guys after school at film and said, ‘hey, we’ve got another shot at this thing, this is special.’ … So the guys are fired up, that’s why you see the emotion. It’s kind of a year’s worth of excitement pent-up.”
Tournament MVP Max Houghton had a team-high 22 points, all-tournament team member Brennan had 15 and Victor Josifovski scored all eight of his points in the fourth quarter. Houghton had nine points spanning the two overtime periods, including all four of the team’s points in the first OT session.
Ward praised Houghton’s performance and said the team made an adjustment late putting its big men on the ball screen, which gave Houghton a little extra space to make plays. Brennan is the team’s top newcomer and has made an immediate impact with his ability to read the floor, drive to the basket and get to the free throw line.
“Scotty had a huge game,” Ward said. “Every game he’s gotten better, every practice he’s gotten a little better. He’s starting to understand how good he can be. He’s got a lot of potential.”
Josifovski does a lot of things well and lets the game come to him. That was clearly apparent against Christopher as the senior forward didn’t score a point in the first three quarters before coming on strong in the fourth. Josifovski has a good feel around the basket, corrals contested balls in traffic and excels in scoring from 12 feet in, via drives or jumpers.
“Victor has been playing really well all season,” Ward said. “I feel like offense [improvement] is the biggest thing we’ve seen from last year to this year. He’s really confident in his offensive game.”
A standout defender, Josifovski also drew a charge with 1 minute, 3 seconds left in the second overtime period with the score tied at 51-51. The next time down the floor, Houghton hit a 3-pointer with 32 seconds remaining to give the Wildcats the lead for good.
Ward also praised the play of junior post Nolan Koch, who is physical and had the main responsibility of guarding Christopher’s best player, Braddock Kjellesvig, who is one of the best centers in the section. Kjellesvig finished with a game-high 26 points but Koch forced him to work hard to earn every one of those points.
“Nolan can’t get overlooked tonight with the job he did on 55 [Kjellesvig],” Ward said. “I think Nolan only had three fouls in the whole game. I mean, he was on 55 every minute that guy was in and did a great job.”
If the Wildcats end up making a deep playoff run in February, they’ll look back to this game as one that helped prepare them for the rigors and intensity of postseason action. There were nine ties and 15 lead changes and for Los Gatos to prevail against a quality opponent speaks volumes to its improvement from last season.
“We feel like we’re leaps and bounds ahead of where we were a year ago,” Ward said.
Indeed, with quality returners in Trent Splaine, Osha Moloney and Tommy Ankenbrandt to go along with newcomer Ronan Chinmulgund, the Wildcats look to compete for a top-three finish in the ultra-competitive Santa Clara Valley Athletic League De Anza Division this season.
Chinmulgund is a 5-foot-11 junior off guard who can flat-out shoot it and is capable of knocking down a barrage of outside jumpers on a moment’s notice. After the opening round games of the tournament, Ward had a feeling Los Gatos and Christopher were on a collision course.
“It kind of seemed like we were on a path to meet and it did not disappoint,” he said. “Tied at the half, tied at four [the end of regulation], overtime and we go to double overtime. Whoever was kind of the last man standing can throw something in at the end and that’s kind of what we got. It was great.”
