DANVILLE – The San Ramon Valley basketball team is not particularly large, without a player over 6 feet 1 inch.
And yet, against one of the most legendary programs of South Bay and a team famous for its prowess of shooting, the Danville school made sure that Pinewood seems to have ran sets against skyscrapers in a telephone booth on Wednesday evening.
The secret of Wolves’s success in the Norcal Open Division in the first round?
San Ramon Valley, the third seeded, lit almost all the screens at the same time on the sixth seed.
Rather than trying to fight traffic and possibly losing a fatal shooter, Ella Gunderson, Carly Stern and Company rather transmitted their mission to the nearest teammate.
The faces keeping the scorers of Pinewood have changed, but the result remained the same, it doesn’t matter who defended the ball.
The tactic worked so brilliantly that Pinewood went for 10 minutes without scoring in the second half of a match that SRV won 56-32.
“They understand help, and help with help, and the switch and the hedge and all that, and they perform it so that you don’t really need a traditional fire blocker,” said SRV coach John Cristiano. “If your mentality is not an intermediate land, ice the edges, do not go around the edges … It is difficult to enter the paint.”
The offensive was not too shabby either during the first victory of San Ramon Valley in three appearances in open division.
Gunderson led the Wolves with 14 points, Rudd and Stern marked new, and SRV as a team made 11 points of 3 points while San Ramon Valley transformed a 25-22 advance at half-time in a rout with a 16-0 race from the start of the third quarter in the middle of the neighborhood.
This round included two miles from Kaitlyn three points and five points by Maya Knapp.
Cristiano made sure to give the Pinewood coach, Doc Scheppler, his accessories after the match, noting that the long -standing coach had framed him when Cristiano began as a coach a decade ago.
“He took me under his wing and he taught me everything I know about basketball,” said Cristiano.
As the dashboard has shown, Doc has taught him.
The hosts had taken place with the Switch-Tout diagram in its eruption 76-43 of Acalanes during the victory of the championship of the North Coast section on Saturday.
But the Wolves kissed him against a team from Pinewood who had given Mitty the group of news from Bay Area n ° 1 everything he could manage in the fight of the opening title of the Côte Côte Côte, and beat SRV 57-52 in the regular season.
In addition to contesting almost all shots, San Ramon Valley dominated in the department of rebound and obtained several seconds of chance thanks to a good job from Stern, Rudd and Maya Knapp.
“We knew they could all shoot,” said Stern. “And the last match we played against them, we did not rebound and the rebound changed the game for us.”
Pinewood obtained open shots, both behind the line and in the painting, more than one opportunity. But the elite shooters usually in Knockdown could not pass the rim.
Jolyn Ding led Pinewood with eight points, and his intrepid training on the edge were one of the rare light points for Panther’s offensive.
Scheppler recognized the open failures of his team, he also praised the team without senior from San Ramon Valley.
“You cannot be big shooters and great players without spending time in the gymnasium, so I know the work they have done, and that manifests itself in what they played well in a big game,” said Scheppler about SRV. “I think that mentally, their daughters have an excellent state of mind, and they were physical and they were strong.”
The strength of San Ramon Valley will be tested in the semi-finals on Saturday against Norcal’s best team.
The Wolves will take the long journey to the Fresno region and play the 32-0 Clovis West, an experienced, talented and athletic team.
But with confidence Sky-High and on a sequence of victories which is now at 14 games, San Ramon Valley likes his chances of going to his first final of the Norcal Open Division.
“They have a very good press, so we will have to work there,” said Mills. “But I like our chances.”
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