DUBLIN — As Bishop O’Dowd celebrated its North Coast Section Division II championship behind the closed doors of the locker room, there was initially a primal team scream that could only be generated by teenage girls.
Makes sense. The Dragons, 71-53 winners over Moreau Catholic at Dublin High Saturday night, had been pointing toward the D-2 championship all season.
A few moments later, there was another team scream of equal intensity. O’Dowd coach Malik McCord explained afterward what the ruckus was about.
“They always ask for their grade,” McCord said. “I hadn’t given them anything above a `C’ all season and tonight I gave them a B-minus and they lost it. They’re a great group of kids.”
And McCord, apparently, is a tough grader.
Top-seeded O’Dowd (19-8) awaits its placement in the Northern California Championships, where they could be bumped up to Division I or remain Division II. No. 2 Moreau, which couldn’t recover from prolonged lapses where its shooting went south, fell to 20-9 and will also play in the NorCals with seeding determined Sunday.
The dominant player was Savannah Jones, a 5-foot-4 inch junior who considers herself a facilitator but led all scorers with 25 points. Jones is the steadying figure on a team that started three freshmen. Two of those freshmen were also in double figures — Lizzy Quinteros with 13 point and Devin Cosgriff with 11. Senior Nya Greenwood, a senior, also had 11 for the Dragons.
“It was about trusting my teammates to have my back, and have theirs, and to keep our composure all the way around,” Jones said. “It’s my job to lead them, help them grow so they can be where I’m at and lead future teams.”
The Mariners, who trailed by as many as 16 points in the second half, somehow scrambled to within 47-41 with 6:11 to play before O’Dowd reasserted itself and closed out the game.
Madison Thomas led Moreau with 23 points, with Dymonique Maxie adding 14 despite foul trouble.
O’Dowd led 17-12 after the first quarter and 34-22 at halftime and then built on that lead in the early third quarter, leading by as much as 40-24 and 46-30. Moreau, particularly early on, had lots of good looks at the basket but couldn’t convert, which the climb that much more difficult.
“We were getting open with things that weren’t in our game plan, so we were rushing shots early,” Moreau coach Toni West said. “We had a lot of opportunities and if we’d have hit some of those shots we would have felt better. But we did a good job going to our defensive principles and our girls played hard. They kept playing through adversity.”
When Thomas scored for Moreau to make it 47-41, Jones countered with a basket and Greenwood with a layup to put O’Dowd up 51-41. It was the beginning of a run that saw the Dragons get theier lead back up to 15 when Quinteros buried a 3-pointer off a feed from Jones with 3:56 to play.
Moreau never seriously threatened afterward.
“We just kept playing our game,” Jones said. “We didn’t worry about the turnovers and the mess-ups we were having. We stayed together.”
McCord said Jones was riding her teammates hard during the week.
“I told her to settle down a little bit,” McCord said. “The team follows her lead, and if she scores, people are in trouble because we have some other scorers as well.”
O’Dowd plays a challenging non-league schedule and lost games close games to good teams by failing to close them out as it did against Moreau.
“I don’t schedule for a pretty record. I schedule to get experience, especially for a young team,” McCord said. “All those games played into tonight. If we’d have played an easy schedule, we wouldn’t have won tonight.”
Moreau, meanwhile took solace in its fourth quarter comeback and looks forward to its NorCal placement.
“I was really excited when we were down by six,” Thomas said. “I was like, let’s pick it up and let’s go. But they’re a great team and it was good competition.”
Said West: “This was our first time in Division II, having moved up from Division III, so to get to this game was good for us.”
