SAN JOSE — It was by no means easy, but Bellarmine College Prep did it. The Bells held off rival St. Francis 55-50 on Tuesday night at Independence High to advance to the Central Coast Section Open Division championship game.
Jake Wojcik scored 21 points and Angelo Athens added 14 points as Bellarmine completed a season sweep of St. Francis — a perfect 3-0 — and improved to 25-1, a magical ride that keeps bearing victories.
Bellarmine has not lost since three days after Christmas, a winning streak that has reached 18 games.
The latest triumph dethroned the section’s reigning Open Division champ and moved Bellarmine into the final Friday night at Santa Clara University against Archbishop Mitty, which beat St. Ignatius 59-51 in the other semifinal.
Bellarmine led much of the game against St. Francis, seemingly putting the score out of reach on a couple of occasions, but Logan Johnson and Co. kept charging. The Lancers cut the deficit to five with 2:39 left and to four with 25 seconds to go.
“It felt like we beat ’em three times tonight,” Bellarmine coach Patrick Schneider said. “They just never stopped coming. Give all the credit to St. Francis. They have the heart of a champion, too, and they just never stopped. It was just a battle all the way to the end.”
Last season, St. Francis went undefeated in the West Catholic Athletic League and 3-0 against Bellarmine, including a win in the Open Division final.
This season, Bellarmine swiped the script, also going 14-0 in the WCAL and sweeping St. Francis.
But the Bells still have one to go to win the section crown.
“We want it tremendously bad,” said Wojcik, a junior. “It’s crazy how much we want it. We went there last year. We got our butts whipped. I personally played awful that game. I just want to come out and give it our most for our seniors.”
Bellarmine trailed 15-10 after one quarter but led by two at halftime and by 10 midway through the third period as Wojcik heated up from long distance. The WCAL’s co-player of the year with Johnson hit all four the Bells’ 3-pointers.
St. Francis pulled to within 38-36 through three quarters but never could reclaim the lead.
“There’s big mountains and bigger mountains,” said Johnson, who finished with 19 points. “Sometimes you’ve got to keep grinding. That’s what we’re going to do. Wherever we get seeded in NorCal, we’re going to keep fighting. I felt like we never gave up tonight.”
But just as it has been all winter to this point, Bellarmine celebrated in the end.
“It is magical,” Schneider said. “Fourteen and 0 and people are like, they kind of dominated. We had five league games we could have lost pretty darn easily. There is just something about a team that wins all those close games. It has been a magical ride.
“There is something really special about how hard they play defensively, how locked in they are on the defensive assignments, how much they trust each other sharing the ball and then, I think, their emotional composure. No one gets every break. Johnson banks in a 3 today. Things happen like that, and our guys have weathered all of that and kept playing together with everything they have.”
Friday, they’ll play for the CCS’s top prize.
For more on high school sports, including schedules and results, visit bayareapreps.com.
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