Cardinal Newman boys basketball team's surprise playoff run ends

HAYWARD - The Cardinal Newman boys knew they would be hard pressed to neutralize Moreau Catholic’s radiant athleticism in Tuesday’s CIF NorCal Division II semifinal playoff game. In the end, the Cardinals got a surprise. It was Moreau’s shooting that proved insurmountable.

“I watched 14 films of them,” Cardinal Newman coach Tom Bonfigli said after his team’s 82-66 loss. “They never shot the ball close to like that. They didn’t miss.”

The Mariners shot better than 50 percent from the floor for the entire game, an unheard-of number for a high school team. The Cardinals couldn’t match the pace, and so their season ended in the boxy Moreau Catholic gym, two stops short of the state championship game.

Moreau (24-9), the No. 3 seed, advances to face top-seeded Saint Francis for the NorCal DII title on Saturday.

“They play anywhere like that in the next round and they’ll win it,” Bonfigli said.

The Mariners are hunting for their first state championship. They have two stellar players in senior guard Damari Milstead and swingman Kyree Walker, rated by many sites as the top freshman in the nation. Milstead entered the game averaging more than 25 points, with Walker right behind him at 21 points to go along with about 6 rebounds and 4 assists.

They are quick and vertically explosive. The Cardinals knew that.

“We’re primarily a man-defending team,” senior forward Jalen Dural said. “And we switched it up because of their drive. It’s gonna be hard to cover that freshman, and hard to cover 11 (Milstead). So we went to a 1-3-1 (zone).”

It worked for a while. Cardinal Newman trailed just 19-17 after the first quarter, and was down 43-33 at halftime. It was an erasable deficit. Then the Mariners started making shots. They began the third quarter with a 10-3 run to push their advantage to 53-36, initiating a flurry of 3-pointers. Five different Moreau players nailed a total of six 3-point shots in the third quarter.

Meanwhile, the Cardinals were going cold. Newman’s senior guard Damian Wallace scored 16 points in the first half but was scoreless in the third quarter, and he wasn’t the only one. Cardinal Newman made 5 of 19 baskets in the quarter to fall behind by more than 20.

Moreau Catholic’s lead grew to 25 points early in the fourth period, and there was no coming back for Newman.

Walker, who looks and plays more like a college junior than a high school freshman, led the way with 29 points and blocked numerous shots. Milstead was right behind with 28 points. After the game, as the Cardinal Newman coaches spoke to the kids in the visitors’ locker room, Walker knocked on the door, stepped inside and offered his well wishes to the Santa Rosa team.

It didn’t help the Cardinals’ defensive effort when Dural, who is 6-foot-4, and big man Gavin Dove, who is 6-5, got into early foul trouble. Newman (27-5) needed all the help it could get in the paint.

“They shot 27 free throws - and we played a lot of zone,” Bonfigli said. “I can’t believe it was that many free throws.”

The Cardinals got off to a great start Tuesday, springing to an 8-2 lead a minute and a half into the game. The Mariners caught up and the score went back and forth in the first quarter, with four ties.

Then Cardinal Newman got a little sloppy, turning over the ball three times in the first 1:45 of the second quarter as Moreau mounted an 8-0 run to go up 27-17. It was a minor stumble, but the Cardinals never truly recovered. They wouldn’t get closer than five points again.

Wallace paced Newman with 18 points. Senior guard Cody Baker added 11, while Dove and junior reserve Christian Hextrum both scored eight.

Wallace wound up bleeding from a cut on his right cheekbone after taking an elbow on an inbounds play with a little over a minute left. It seemed appropriate for the aggressive playmaker.

“Talk about a role model. He’s fearless,” Dove said. “Anybody that comes up against him, he’s going through ’em. He’s just a stud.”

The loss stung, of course, but the Newman boys felt they were playing with borrowed money at this point. After being upset by Tamalpais in the North Coast Section Division IV semifinals, they drew an at-large bid to the CIF tournament and were stuck with the No. 15 seed in Division II. That meant a procession of road games.

But the Cardinals came together to knock off No. 2 Whitney (of Rocklin) and No. 7 Serra (San Mateo) in the first two rounds.

“For us to come out and step up when the odds were against us for so many games, I think it was great,” Dove said. “I’d say we definitely had something to prove. Because we were expected to win that game (against Tamalpais).”

Bonfigli praised his team for the night’s effort - and for the season’s.

“This was a really good group,” the coach said. “Not a lot of star power, just an exceptional, exceptional group of kids, and very hardworking. They really loved one another. And they love to play.”

Dural was already finding perspective after the game. “You know what? The Tam game is behind us, and we’ll be talking about that time we beat that 7-1 center from Whitney and that great point guard from Serra,” he said. “So it’s memorable. No regrets after this season.”

You can reach staff writer Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com.