San Marcos boys basketball pulled out a rollercoaster rivalry affair with Dos Pueblos on Wednesday, earning a 61-51 victory inside the Thunderhut.
After a back-and-forth opening half, the Royals outscored the Chargers 29-7 in the third quarter to pull away. Dos Pueblos answered by scoring the first 14 points of the fourth to cut into the deficit, but San Marcos regained control down the stretch to pick up the win.
“I think it’s kind of indicative of our team,” San Marcos head coach Matt Jordan said of the game. “We’re really good sometimes, and not so good other times, and we can beat really good teams, and we can lose to average teams.
“I think that for this team to do what we want to do in the playoffs and finish the year out the way we want to, we’re going to have to put it together for four quarters.”
With the win, the Royals are now 19-6 overall and 10-2 in league play, sitting one game behind first-place Santa Barbara High. Meanwhile, the Chargers are now 12-14 and 3-9 against league opponents.
The first quarter was full of runs, as Dos Pueblos broke a two-minute scoring drought with six straight points to take a 6-0 lead at the 4:31 mark.
The Royals responded with 12 unanswered points of their own, including eight straight by Sergio Landeros to go up 12-6. However, the Chargers capped off the quarter with a layup and a pair of free throws to cut the SM lead to 12-10 heading into the second.
The back-and-forth trend continued into the second quarter, as neither team held more than a one-possession lead for the rest of the first half.
The two sides went blow-for-blow down the stretch, as Brody Green went coast-to-coast with a layup to give SM a 21-18 lead with one minute to go. Dos Pueblos’ Evan Pinsker immediately answered with a three-pointer to tie things up.
Landeros then got a layup to go on the other end, but Pinsker stayed hot and gave his team a 24-23 lead with another long ball with 12 seconds left in the half. However, San Marcos’ Koji Hefner got the last laugh of the half as he followed up a miss with a putback layup at the buzzer to go up 25-24 at halftime.
The Royals came out of the break feeling the momentum left behind from the first-half buzzer beater and quickly turned the game on its head.
San Marcos opened the second half on a jaw-dropping 19-0 run that featured electric plays and was capped off by a behind-the-back pass by Brody Green that found Aidan Conlan, who drilled the three-pointer to bring the lead to 44-24 at the 3:41 mark.
“We probably played the best quarter of the year in the third,” Jordan said. “What I’m proud of about the group is we’ve reset and we’ve really hung our hat on three things: defending in the half court, rebounding and pushing in transition and then executing on offense.
“We’ve kind of gotten back to that and I think it’s shown in the results.”
The Chargers finally got on the board in the third with a layup by Coulter Jay, but the Royals continued to roll on both ends to balloon the lead to 54-31 with one quarter to play.
The San Marcos duo of Green and Hefner were in the middle of the third-quarter flurry on both ends of the court. Both players ended with 16 points, while Hefner hauled in 11 rebounds, five assists and five blocks, and Green recorded six rebounds and four assists.
Landeros and Conlan both reached double figures as well for the Royals with 15 and 12 points, respectively.
“We’re really hard to beat when that happens,” Jordan said of the balanced attack. “I think the third quarter was the best version of our team… We have really good players and when we get on transition, we’re super, super, super hard to stop because we have a lot of really good athletes.
“Brody can really push it and really pass it and Koji can finish it. Aidan can shoot it. We have a nice complement of players and when it’s pretty, it gets really pretty.”
Dos Pueblos managed to shake off the third quarter and immediately responded to begin the fourth, scoring the first 14 points of the quarter to cut the deficit down to 54-45 with 4:15 to play.
The Charger defense caused plenty of issues for the Royals in that stretch, and San Marcos was called for a pair of technical fouls to help the visitors creep back in the game.
“That’s just the type of group this is,” Dos Pueblos head coach Joe Zamora said of the fourth-quarter run. “I was really happy with them. You can tell the defense frustrated them a little bit.
“We’ve been in this position before. We took it personally, and that’s what it was. We talked about that, taking everything personally. If a guy scores on you, next time he doesn’t. If a guy gets a rebound, next time he doesn’t. The guys really buy into that.”
Logan Pearce led the comeback effort in the fourth and ended the night with 10 points and six rebounds. Meanwhile, Jay dropped 18 points and Caleb Damron tallied 12 of his own.
“[Pearce] is a vocal player. He’s very intense, sometimes we have to reel them in a little bit, but I love that. I’d rather reel them in than tell them to be more aggressive,” Zamora said.
After a San Marcos timeout, the Royals recollected themselves and got to the free-throw line with efficiency down the stretch to pull out the win.
San Marcos will be on the road against Buena on Friday, while Dos Pueblos will play host to Pacifica at 7 p.m.