Hawks headed back to D-4 hoops championship game

The third time was the charm for the Liberty Ranch boys basketball team, which defeated Union Mine 62-61 in the Sac-Joaquin Section Division IV semifinals on Tuesday.

It was the third time this season Liberty Ranch and Union Mine played each other — the first two went to UM, 70-58 on Jan. 21 and 84-73 on Feb. 7, as the Diamondbacks cruised to a perfect 10-0 record in the Sierra Valley Conference.

Now the Hawks (18-13) can see if the fourth time is the charm. Liberty Ranch has been to the section D-4 championship game three times before, but never gotten over the hump, with a 63-52 loss to Summerville in 2013, a 72-57 loss to Capital Christian in 2015 and a 73-70 loss to Sonora last year.

Waiting for the third-seeded Hawks in the championship game, once again, is No. 1 Sonora, which took down No. 5 Calaveras 5238 in the other semifinal. The championship game is at 4 p.m. on Thursday at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.

“Our team all season, the goal’s been leave a legacy,” said Liberty Ranch’s first-year coach Brian Chavez. “It doesn’t matter how many points you score, how many games you win, it matters how you play at the end of the year. We’ve won 12 of 15 games, and we’ve won all three of our playoff games because of our defense, and that’s something we didn’t do at the beginning of the year.”

Jalen Patterson led the Hawks with 26 points and added 7 rebounds, 5 assists and 4 steals. But another couple of players had the spotlight in the final seconds of the game.

Union Mine took the lead with seconds to go, and Liberty Ranch took the ball down, called timeout and set up a sideline play.

“We ran the play pretty well, and it deflected off of Cody (Smith)’s arm,” Chavez said. “When it hit his arm, it bounced off the backboard, and Branson (McLelland) went and got the ball, looked like he got fouled, and put it back in to take the lead.”

One last Union Mine possession went for naught, with the rebound going to Ahmari Douglas.

Max Oliver added 8 points, McLelland and Drew Fischer had 6 each, Douglas had 5, Cameron Hopkins had 4, Javohn Schweigert

had 2 and Smith had 1. Schweigert and McLelland added 5 rebounds each, and Hopkins had 4.

The one word Chavez had on his mind after the game was composure, after his squad trailed 3531 at halftime and battled back.

“We got down early, an dour kids stayed composed,” Chavez said. “That’s another thing we worked on with them. It’s a very tough environment at Union Mine, and they stayed together.”