SAN MATEO — Half an hour prior to tip-off Friday night it was nearly impossible to find an empty seat in the stands for the annual Jungle Game at Serra.
But home-court advantage wasn’t enough for the Padres to avoid a loss in the spirited rivalry for the first time since 2012, as St. Ignatius left with a 70-61 triumph fueled by a stifling effort in the second half.
“t’s kind of the epicenter of the Serra community and it’s definitely a fun game to be a part of,” Serra coach Chuck Rapp said. “It’s frustrating because we take pride in this game and this game means a lot to these kids, so I feel bad that I wasn’t able to help them win it.”
St. Ignatius (10-4, 3-1 WCAL) capped off an emotional week that three days earlier included a 68-61 victory over Sacred Heart Cathedral on the campus of University of San Francisco.
“For us, we’re coming off Bellarmine, Mitty, our Bruce Mahoney game on Tuesday with 5,000 people and then the Jungle — never before have those two games been in the same week,” St. Ignatius coach Rob Marcaletti said. “That’s why I love these guys. They’re so mentally strong right now and we’re really working on growing and becoming tighter as a unit.”
St. Ignatius senior Darrion Trammell delivered a game-high 23 points, as the Wildcats erased a 38-31 halftime deficit.
Serra (9-5, 1-3) was led by junior point guard Parker McDonald with 20 points, but the offense sputtered during a nearly 7½-minute stretch of the second half in which the Padres were outscored 18-3 and were left trailing 62-51.
“I thought in the first half we were doing a good job of getting to the rim and sharing the ball is usually the cause of that,” Rapp said. “The ball got a little sticky there and for whatever reason we just haven’t been able to put four quarters together. If I knew, I’d be a millionaire, but we just gotta be able to sustain these runs. Right now we’re playing half a game and we’ve got to play a full game.”
The Padres methodically built its first-half cushion by attacking the paint, with 6-foot-3 small forward Colin McCarthy leading all scorers with 11 points at intermission.
Buckets were much harder to find out of the locker room after tweaks to the defensive rotations of St. Ignatius.
“We were getting out of our defensive game plan, it was crazy,” said Marcaletti, who simply reminded his players of practice for the past couple of days. “Normally (at the half) we come here, we meet as a coaching staff for five minutes and we walk in (the locker room). This one, I was, ‘We don’t need to meet, I know what’s wrong.’ … And once we tweaked that and got back to what we want to do in the second half, I think it just took care of itself.”
During its current three-game skid in the WCAL, the Padres have allowed 65, 64 and now a season-high 70 points.
That’s in sharp contrast of the 43 points per game the defense surrendered in the six-game winning streak that preceded the current doldrums.
“Our goal is to keep the team in the 40s, so when you get 70, that’s too much,” said Rapp, who noted that the Wildcats made half of their shots. “Fifty percent from the field is just too high. SI had too many straight-line drives to the basket, we still got outrebounded and our assist-to-turnover ratio is not quite right. We’re like halfway there, we’re not all the way there.”
Meanwhile, St. Ignatius is winner of six out of seven, the only hiccup an overtime loss to Bellarmine.
Does that mean some well-earned time off during MLK weekend?
“We’re not good enough to take days off — that’s the truth,” Marcaletti said. “I’m not good enough to take a day off and neither are they, so we’ve just got to get back to work. We’re happy with 3-1 and we’ll be ready for Valley on Tuesday.”
