For the third time in four years, the Sobrato girls basketball team is a league champion.
And what had to happen for the Bulldogs to say that after Thursday night are as dramatic as it was surprising.
First, Sobrato won 55-49 in overtime over Pioneer to clinch a share of the division title. Second—and not known to the Bulldogs until well after everyone went home from the game—arch rivals Live Oak defeated second-place Leland in San Jose to cement the outright title for Sobrato.
Sobrato stands at 11-1 (18-4 overall) in South Division play, three games up on Leland who sits at 7-4.
Sobrato was on its way to defeat against Pioneer and staring a tough two-game road trip in the face. With less than two minutes left to play, Sobrato was down by eight points.
The Bulldogs needed a win to clinch at least a share of the South Division title or else have to win at Santa Teresa on Tuesday then at Live Oak in an end of the season rivalry contest to clinch the division out right.
And in the beginning of the game, Sobrato actually came out strong, leading 17-11 in the first quarter and led 26-17 in the second before Pioneer hit another gear that pulled the Mustangs to within three. The Mustangs outscored Sobrato 11-7 to take a 34-33 lead.
After going up by nine, Sobrato’s offense went cold.
The Bulldogs had as many points in the second and third quarters combined as turnovers (16). In the first quarter, Sobrato committed just three turnovers and in the fourth quarter and OT, the Bulldogs had just two.
And enter the first of unexpected events to transpire Thursday night.
Ally Nodohara hit a trio of 3s inside of the final minute of play.
With 36 seconds to play, she it a 3 to pull the game to within two. On the other end, Nodohara pulled down a rebound after Pioneer’s Kiki Neisier missed the second of two free throws.
And with Sobrato down by three with the clock running down, Nodohara got the ball back into her hands, squared herself up and drained a 3.
She didn’t even know the magnitude of that shot.
“Honestly that last 3 I didn’t realize it was going to tie the game,” Nodohara said. “So I just kept shooting.”
Pioneer couldn’t get the ball across half court quickly before conceding going to overtime.
Down by eight points, Sobrato assistant coach Anna Harp—filling in for coach Erica Wallace who gave birth to a son earlier in the week—made the choice to trust the defense would get stops and opted not to foul Pioneer to stop the clock.
She said there were points where she wanted to tell the girls to foul, but she just let them play and it paid off.
“I was tempted. There was a couple of times where I was like nah, nah, but our girls make smart plays,” Harp said. “They know the angles to go at. In the beginning, yeah they were hacking and stuff, but once you get it out of your system and understand the situation that any foul is a free throw.”
Harp said she called a timeout late in the quarter and just told the girls she wanted to see a different team out on the floor than what she was seeing.
“I told them when you guys come out, I want you to turn up the defense because the defense was killing us mostly,” Harp said.
In OT, Sobrato hit the first bucket from KiannaBriel Maldia and the Mustangs were done.
Pioneer was held to two points in the overtime period, committing four turnovers and just didn’t have the same fight as in previous quarters.
“I know it’s super hard when a team comes back and ties it and goes to overtime, the momentum was all with us,” Harp said. “The fans were all here. I felt like we couldn’t give them any air to breathe. They were good at executing. When we just let them see the court, they just saw everything.”
Combined with a rocking gym that got started when Nodohara drained her second 3-pointer, the momentum and the energy of the room were all on the side of the home team.
“From that point he had come back from eight points in the last minute or two, so all the momentum was with us,” Nodohara said. “We just kept driving because they were in foul trouble to get us to the free throw line.”
Unbeknownst to Sobrato at the time—and wildly reminiscent to the Bulldogs’ 2014/15 championship—the only team still putting up a fight in the standings was going down to Live Oak.
The Acorns put Leland down 66-54 to mathematically eliminate the Chargers from title contention.
When Sobrato won the Santa Teresa Division championship two years ago, the Bulldogs edged out Leigh for the title when they beat Live Oak in the final game and the Longhorns lost to Santa Teresa the same night.
This time the celebration was more muted.
Coming off the court, Maldia signaled to her teammates to take it easy with the victory celebration.
The players went into their auxiliary room for the post-game meeting (some cheering could be heard coming from inside) and emerged like normal.
“Our goal was to win a league championship. If we tie, that’s OK, but we want to win a league title,” Nodohara said right after the game.
Maldia led the team in scoring with 16, including three free throws in the fourth quarter, which helped keep the game manageable.
Nodohara had 13 points to follow, 11 of which came in the fourth quarter and nine of those came in the final minute.
“She just let them fly,” Harp said. “She didn’t second guess herself, she didn’t think about the pressure, so that’s what it came down to.”
She also broke a field goal drought that lasted halfway through the fourth quarter.
To that point, Maldia hitting free throws were the only points Sobrato mustered until Nodohara hit a bucket with 4:32 to go.
And then it wasn’t until she hit her first 3 that Sobrato got back on the board.
Karla Martinez led the team with nine boards to go with seven points.
Martinez came through with four points in the overtime period as well as two steals to help put the game on ice.
Meanwhile, Pioneer had three players in double figures, led by Neisier with 13 points followed by Olivia Watters with 10 and Kerissa Deeds with 11.
Neiser also had a game-high 10 rebounds.
Only Deeds scored in the overtime.
Sobrato hits the road 7 p.m. Tuesday to take on Santa Teresa. The Bulldogs will close out the regular season at Live Oak for a quad match on Friday before awaiting the playoff seedings due out Feb. 19.
