Twice in the past five days the Sonoma Valley High School varsity basketball boys have faced the daunting challenge of playing recently crowned Sonoma County League champion Elsie Allen on its Santa Rosa home court and suffering the same fate in both games – slow-starting offense leading to harrowing deficits.
After falling into a deep early hole on the road in last Friday’s regular-season finale, with Elsie Allen clinching its first-ever outright league title in school history, the fourth-seeded Dragons were back in the same setting Wednesday night and, unfortunately, found themselves lagging on offense and lapsing on defense.
With only one basket made and trailing 15-2 at the end of the first quarter, Sonoma finally started scoring, but couldn’t slow down the hard-charging Lobos, who built 19- and 25-point halftime and third-quarter leads, respectively, en route to a 60-37 win.
With the loss, the Dragons were eliminated from the SCL Tourney and, with their 6-6 SCL regular-season record, just qualify for, but sit perilously on the bubble of making the North Coast Section Division-3 playoffs, and will find out their NCS fate, and if their postseason will continue, at Sunday’s seeding meeting.
Pacing Sonoma in Wednesday evening’s SCL Tourney clash were senior Ryan Fisher’s 11 points and three rebounds; senior Alex Gustafson’s eight points, six rebounds and two steals; senior Ryan Wilbanks’ seven points and three rebounds; junior Edwin Reyes’ six points and three rebounds; senior Cyle Caselli’s two points, three rebounds, three blocked shots, three steals and two assists; and senior Tristan Mertens and sophomore Luke Severson’s two points each.
Rounding out the varsity Dragon boys’ hoops team – directed by head coach Dennis Housman and assistant coaches Drue Jacobs and John Ratshin – are juniors Nicolas Diaz-DeTorres, Spencer McNairy, Joseph Petersen, Miles Pimentel, Daniel Van Kirk and Max Yankovich; sophomore Coleton Mertens; and freshmen Max Gustafson and Dylan Samaniego, who along with Severson, were brought up from Sonoma’s SCL first-place junior varsity boys’ squad for the postseason.
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