High school boys basketball: At Archbishop Mitty, winning WCAL championships never gets old
Story & photos: Isaiah Cabebe's 3-pointer with 11.8 seconds left tops Riordan, clinching another West Catholic Athletic League title for Mitty.
SAN JOSE — Tim Kennedy hugged his players. He saluted the student section, then the pep band. All smiles, the longtime Archbishop Mitty boys basketball coach said this never gets old.
Nearby, his team was in the midst of celebrating the program’s 14th West Catholic Athletic League championship, a title clinched Wednesday night when the Monarchs rallied on their home court from 13 points behind in the second half to edge Archbishop Riordan 50-47.
Isaiah Cabebe’s 3-pointer from the corner with 11.8 seconds left gave Mitty a 48-47 lead, the home team’s first advantage since the opening minutes.
Aidan Burke’s two free throws with nine-tenths of a second on the clock completed the scoring.
“It’s a new journey,” Kennedy said. “To win it with these guys, who have kind of slowly grown up in these games, I am proud of these guys. Isaiah hitting the big shot — coming where he’s come from, from freshman to playing JV to playing a few minutes last year and then stepping up big-time this year.”
Cabebe hit two shots in the first quarter and another in the second quarter. But the senior cooled in the second half.
Kennedy told him to keep shooting.
“He was like, ‘Shoot the next one, shoot the next one,'” Cabebe said. “And it happened to be that the last one was the game-winner.”
When the ball splashed through the hoop, the Mitty crowd erupted
Cabebe heard silence.
“For a second after I hit it, I felt nothing and I just heard nothing,” he said. “I just felt so relieved because I was missing everything and then I trusted myself.”
Isaiah Cabebe hits the winning 3-pointer for Mitty with 11.8 seconds left as the Monarchs clinch the WCAL title with a 50-47 victory over Riordan | @WCALSports @mittymenshoops @leftwich @VytasMazeika @JensenPhil @Jesus_Cano88 pic.twitter.com/CaLZZvuec2
— Darren Sabedra (@DarrenSabedra) February 10, 2022
The winning play came in transition, with Cabebe dribbling across midcourt and passing to Derek Sangster, who scored 12 of his 14 points in the second half.
Sangster tried to drive to the basket but started to stumble. As he was falling, the junior bounced a pass to Cabebe, who immediately let the shot fly.
“Isaiah’s been a big part of our team,” Sangster said. “He’s our floor general. He’s been great on spacing the floor and passing the ball. It’s great for him. Even though he was struggling, he hit the shot to give us that ‘ship.”
Riordan had a shot to reclaim the lead after Cabebe’s basket. But King-Njhsanni Wilhite’s floater from near the free-throw line, which was defended nicely by Sangster, fell short.
“I was proud of Derek,” Kennedy said. “He changed his mindset in the second half. He was playing with force, and it changed our whole team.”
Mitty (18-4, 11-1) scored the first eight points, but Riordan (14-8, 8-4) responded with a 13-0 run to lead by five after the first quarter. The Crusaders, making their first trip to Mitty since losing to the Monarchs in last spring’s Central Coast Section Open Division final, padded the lead in the second quarter.
The visitors from San Francisco led 28-16 at halftime.
The momentum began to turn midway through the third quarter when Mitty took what seemed like a dozen shots in one possession, aggressively crashing the board to keep the ball.
The sequence ended with Sangster making a free throw and missing the second.
Mitty grabbed the offensive rebound and Jaiden Paran buried a 3-pointer, cutting the deficit to 32-23.
When Burke swished a 3-pointer from the top, Riordan’s advantage was down to 32-26.
“We went into halftime and we were like, ‘We’re just playing soft. We need to come out with a little more fight,'” Burke said. “We had a game like this against St. Francis, where we were down the whole game and at the end we somehow pick it back up and finish it out.”
Burke led Mitty with 16 points and nine rebounds. Cabebe finished with 10.
Wilhite had 19 points for Riordan.
“They made a couple of big plays down the stretch and we made one less,” Riordan coach Joe Curtin said. “That was the difference in the game.”
Photos: Mitty 50, Riordan 47
