Revenge tour: Salesian ends Piedmont’s perfect season, eager to face Mitty in NorCal Open final

PIEDMONT – The most successful athletes are often driven by their failures, and Salesian’s girls basketball team is no exception.

Traveling to a tiny Piedmont gymnasium, its crowd packed from the doors to the ceiling, to play the top seed in NorCal’s Open Division semifinal on Saturday night was exactly what Salesian wanted.

Makiah Asidanya and a locked-in Salesian defense suffocated the previously-undefeated hosts in a 48-45 slugfest to advance to the region final.

Piedmont beat Salesian by six points on MLK Day, and the Salesian players had not forgotten that painful loss.

“We knew we were going to come back even stronger,” junior guard Madalyn Kanazawa said.

Archbishop Mitty, victors over Clovis-West in the other semifinal and a team that beat Salesian twice in the 2021-22 season, is up next.

If the Salesian players are to be believed, a trip to San Jose and the defending NorCal champions for a berth in the Open final was the desired outcome all along.

“We’re on a revenge tour right now, so we’re coming for them,” Asidanya said. “We’re coming for every team to get to be state champions.”

Piedmont’s offense, which averaged 70 points-per-game during its 27-0 start, was unable to consistently create open shots. And when they did, the easy layups rimmed out more often than not. That was a problem in the fourth quarter, when Salesian started the final frame on 7-0 run to go up 41-33.

Asidanya coasted in for a layup off a steal, Maya Love-Sangco made her only three-pointer of the game, and then D’yani Bernstine nailed two free throws. Piedmont didn’t get on the scoreboard until the 4:57 mark when Trinity Zamora made a free throw and also put back a Piedmont miss.

“It’s heartbreaking to go out like this, and I thought we had a lot more left in us,” said Zamora, a SDSU commit. “But you know, chapters end and new chapters begin. That’s just what life is.”

Piedmont kept the game close until the end, when it had a chance to tie the game with five seconds remaining. Top guards Natalia Martinez and Perseas Giokaris had fouled out, but the Highlanders still got a rare open look from the corner.

The shot was long, and Salesian went to the free-throw line. After missing the front end of a one-and-one, a last-second halfcourt heave by a Piedmont player came up well short.

Piedmont led 10-7 after one quarter and 22-21 at halftime, but Salesian took a 34-33 lead going into the fourth quarter and never trailed again.

“We didn’t get where we wanted to go, but you can’t take away from what the girls did,” Piedmont coach Bryan Gardere said. “Tonight was just not our night.”

Asidanya and Kanazawa led Salesian (27-4) with 11 points each, Sofia Fidelus scored seven points, and Eryn Gardner grabbed 10 rebounds. Martinez scored a game-high 20 points for Piedmont (27-1), and Eva Levingston scored 11 points while being the focus of the Salesian gameplan.

“The best thing we did was box out and get the rebound, so she didn’t get the follow-up,” Salesian coach Steve Pezzola said.

Salesian’s players and coach acknowledged that dethroning Mitty will be a difficult task, but the Richmond school does have a history of being a thorn in the Monarch’s side. It knocked Haley Jones-led Mitty teams out of the Open playoffs in 2016 and 2019.

“It’s a tough game down there,” Pezzola said, before adding, “but we’ve gone down there with teams as the underdogs before, and come out with the victory.”