Piedmont High School hosted Bishop O’Dowd in as weird a basketball setting as you could imagine. No fans were allowed into Binks Gymnasium on Feb. 4 after the postgame fight with San Leandro on Jan. 31.
Then, the Highlanders shocked the Dragons with a 64-62 victory, their first over their rival in at least 20 years.
Dillon Casey picked up three fouls in the first quarter and his fourth in the third. He was sitting on four points entering the fourth quarter, but took over the game offensively. He scored eight points down the stretch, including the steal and layup that put Piedmont up for good.
“To be honest, the O’Dowd player literally threw it right at me,” Casey said. “I did not have to put any work in besides the finish. He just dropped the egg in my basket.”
The Highlanders came into the game having lost three out of their past four games including the one against San Leandro.
“The one word is ‘gritty’,” Piedmont coach Ben Spencer said. “We had to do a deep dive the last two days at practice to figure out which way we wanted our season to go. I’ve been talking to the boys the last 72 hours of how difficult the whole situation is. You find out who teams are and who players are, not when things are going well but when things are going bad.”
With Casey on the bench with three minutes, 16 seconds to go in the first quarter, the Highlanders had to hang on tight. Kaiden Gibbs scored nine of his 21 points in the period and Bishop O’Dowd kept pushing. The quarter ended with the Dragons up 27-18, but it could have been much worse. In the next three quarters, Bishop O’Dowd was held to 35 points.
“I got into foul trouble early which is always tough for a player,” Casey said. “It’s almost like you get iced. I saw my teammates out there flowing. I tried to take after them and do my own thing.”
Beach Lorin scored nine of his 20 points in the first quarter to help keep the game close. P.J. Brayer scored seven of his 12 in the second quarter to do the same.
Still, the Dragons maintained the lead until the fourth quarter. Casey’s layup gave Piedmont a 59-57 lead. The Highlanders outscored Bishop O’Dowd 18-9 in the quarter.
“They scored nine straight times in the fourth quarter so we didn’t defend,” Dragons coach Lou Richie said. “They were able to get to the rim. We made turnovers and we didn’t rebound as well. They got hot and had momentum and they pulled it out. We had the energy in warmups, they had the energy at the end of the game.”
The turnovers were huge. Bishop O’Dowd had six in the fourth quarter to two for Piedmont. The Highlanders had just nine for the game.
Lucian Fang Ring had 14 for Piedmont. Brayer had six rebounds and Lorin had five. Garry Hill-Thomas had 20 points for the Dragons.
The game was the first for the Highlanders since the brawl on Jan. 31. The next day, Spencer and Richie decided to bar fans from the game. The atmosphere was quite different with just a handful of videographers and media present.
“You could hear everything that the players and coaches said,” Richie said.
Said Casey, “Maybe the no spectator thing did it for us. It was just the other team, us and a basketball. Not much extra thoughts. It was just focus, really.”