MILPITAS — The voyage through uncharted waters continues for the Milpitas basketball team.
The Trojans not only reached the state playoffs for the first time, but advanced Tuesday with a thrilling, white-knuckler of a 68-67 overtime win over Woodcreek in front of a packed house on campus.
And now Milpitas (24-4), the NorCal No. 2 seed in Division II, will get to play a quarterfinal game at home on Thursday against seventh-seeded Clovis East.
Unprecedented stuff.
“We’re just trying to put Milpitas on the map in terms of basketball,” said 6-foot-6 senior Jacob Wrencher, who led the way Tuesday with 22 points.
It was a game of multiple ebbs and flows. Milpitas led by eight early, Woodcreek went up by nine in the second quarter, Milpitas closed the third quarter on an 11-2 burst to turn a five-point deficit into a four-point lead.
The Trojans maintained the lead throughout the fourth quarter until Woodcreek’s Zach Bualat hit a 3-pointer with 23 seconds left to tie it up, 63-63.
Milpitas had a chance to take the last shot and get the win, but was unable to get a shot off on that final possession.
But instead of momentum swinging to Woodcreek in overtime, Milpitas shrugged off the empty possession at the end of regulation and scored the first five points of OT, on a 3-pointer by point guard Jordon North and a bucket on a drive by Wrencher.
Woodcreek made three free throws to pull within two. The visitors shot 26 free throws for the game compared to seven for Milpitas.
“I’m not surprised,” Milpitas coach Champ Wrencher said. “That’s the advantage they had with their big (6-8 Max Van Laningham, Woodcreek’s leading scorer and rebounder on the season who scored 20 points).
“We play aggressive defense. We’ve been in that situation before where we’ve given up a lot of free throws but were still able to do enough things to win.”
Woodcreek called timeout after rebounding a Milpitas miss with 9.3 seconds left. A last-second shot missed as the clock went to zero, but Milpitas was called for a foul on the rebound and 0.2 was put back on the clock.
The home crowd set about raising the decibel level as high as possible as Woodcreek’s Will Munoz stepped to the line. He made the first foul shot but missed off the front rim on the second as the celebration began in earnest.
Jacob Wrencher scored his game-high 22 on a variety of jump shots and drives. Center Isaac Sisay made four crucial shots from behind the 3-point arc and scored 14.
“They were sagging off screens so I had to shoot them,” Sisay said. “I practiced those 3s all day yesterday because we thought I’d be open.”
After going 21-3 in the regular season, Milpitas was placed in the Central Coast Section Open Division and the team surprised many observers by going 2-1 with both wins over West Catholic Athletic League teams (Bellarmine and Serra), something no public school had done since the CCS instituted pool play in 2022.
“Somebody mentioned the possibility of going Open way back in October and I looked at them like, ‘Are you serious?”’ coach Wrencher said. “The more we got closer to the end of the season I started thinking, ‘Man, this could actually happen.’ We played in the Open relaxed, faced some really good competition and got better, and hit the ground running in NorCals.”
And now, after a win in their NorCal opener, the Trojans get another home game on Thursday.
“I want to do this again,” the coach said. “I’ve never seen this since I’ve been here. I’m so happy that this is happening and I want everybody to do this again. I’ve been waiting all my career for this.”