OAKLAND — Ryan Diew couldn’t hold in his excitement.
The first-year Head-Royce coach was already hugging his family and saying “we did it,” with five minutes left in the North Coast Section Division V championship game against league rival Athenian.
While the celebration might have seemed premature, everyone in the gym — including Athenian — knew what the outcome of the game was going to be.
After struggling to find its rhythm in the first half, Head-Royce exploded in the fourth quarter to beat Athenian 66-46 and capture the crown — the first section title in school history.
“This means a lot,” senior Marcel Pierre-Louis said about winning the section title. “We’ve been trying to win a section title here for a while and we’re the only team to do it. It means the world to us.”
Bryce Clepper led Head-Royce with 15 points. Pierre-Louis scored 13 points and Micah Riebel added 11 points.
Evan Lucas had a game-high 18 points for Athenian. Surya Devasenapathy scored 10 points.
Head-Royce came into the game confident, having beaten Athenian three times in the regular season.
But some of that confidence worked against the Jayhawks early.
Athenian jumped out to a 9-1 lead, feeding off its own crowd’s energy. The Owls went 4 of 8 from the three-point line in the first half, slicing up the Head-Royce zone.
Though Head-Royce was only down 26-22 going into the halftime break, the momentum was on Athenian’s side. An early third quarter run from the Owls could have easily put the game away.
Diew’s halftime speech to his team didn’t take long, but he reminded them what was on the line.
“For them, this was about legacy,” Diew said. “This was an opportunity for the first Head-Royce team to ever win an NCS championship. So I told them that was what they were fighting for.”
The Jayhawks took the halftime speech to heart and it showed in the first three minutes in the third quarter. Head-Royce came out of halftime going on a 14-4 run aided by a suffocating 1-3-1 zone. A strong finish to the end of the third had Head-Royce up 39-35 heading into the final quarter of play.
The Jayhawks continued their momentum into the fourth quarter, scoring 11 unanswered points in the first four minutes. The tandem of Pierre-Louis and Riebel combined to score 15 of Head-Royce’s 27 fourth quarter points to close out Athenian at home.
“We’ve been in situations like that before,” Riebel said. “We just stayed calm and persevered. Our coaches were on our side the whole time, telling us we were going to get it done.”
In a highly emotional championship game, the crowd played a big factor for both teams. Each student section only consisted of 20 to 30 students, but each crowd filled the small Head-Royce gym with loud cheers.
Players on each team had fun banter with the opposing crowd at points during the game. For Head-Royce, it used the friendly back-and-forth to its advantage.
“Everybody was excited for this game, so the noise from both crowds was helpful,” Riebel said.
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Both teams will be awaiting for their next opponent as Athenian and Head-Royce secured a spot in the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Norcals. For Diew and Head-Royce, the hope is to stay in Division V in order to have a better chance at contending for a state championship.
However, the Jayhawks 26-4 record could work against them in trying to stay in their current division. According to Maxpreps, Head-Royce is currently ranked as the best Division V team in California and the 24th best team in the San Francisco Metro Rankings.
With the current competitive equity format, Head-Royce could very well be pushed into Division III as a low seed with the best case being a Division IV team with a middle seed in the state tournament.
“I’m not a big fan of the competitive equity thing,” Diew said. “I really want to give these guys a chance to win a state championship. They’ve worked really hard and did this from a small school. I hope (CIF) doesn’t put us too high and puts us in Division I or Division II. But I do think this team is special enough to beat anybody.”