Thrills keep growing for Pilots’ Lippi at 70
St. Joseph Notre Dame-Alameda boys basketball coach Don Lippi turned 70 on Jan. 22. He’s in his 40th season of coaching, 39th in high schools.
Lippi has won 849 games, lost 271 and, since 2004, he has claimed four state and seven Northern California championships for the Pilots.
“I love it more now than ever,” Lippi said Monday afternoon. “I’m 70 and this is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.”
You should have seen him after his team’s 83-80, doubleovertime home win over 15thranked St. Patrick-St. Vincent of Vallejo on Saturday night.
The Pilots (17-9) squandered an 18-point halftime lead, then SPSV scored the final 10 points of regulation to force overtime and led by three heading into the final seconds.
Julian Vaughns, a lanky 6-foot-3 junior guard who has been offered a scholarship by USF, then swished an off-balance 35-footer at the buzzer, forcing the second extra period.
Vaughns scored 22 of his game-high 29 points after the third period, lifting St. Joseph to its seventh straight win and vaulting it back into The Chronicle’s Top 20 for the first time since starting the season 2-4.
“How much fun was that?” Lippi said of Saturday’s win. “That’s why I’m enjoying the game more than ever. I can smell the roses after a great win. When I was 30, I’d be worried about the next game. Now, it’s like, ‘Let’s enjoy this for a while.’ ”
He has enjoyed the steady development of this team.
Vaughns, a transfer from St. Mary’s-Berkeley, has been a breath of fresh air. Beyond his keen ability to get to the rim, shooting range and muchimproved defense, Vaughns is also a gym rat. He leads the Pilots at 14 points per game.
“First thing he asked us when he got here was if we could open the gym up at 6 a.m.,” Lippi said. “We have a lot of hard workers, but he’s helped change the culture. Now the guys are working harder, longer.”
Without Vaughns — he had to sit out until January for transferring — or fourth-year starter Cameron Ba, out with a concussion for 10 games, the Pilots struggled in the early going, despite strong play from 6-5, 220-pound junior Adam Campos (11 points, 10 rebounds per game) and 5-9 junior guard Kobe Kiener (11 points).
Once at full strength, SJND was able to compete with the big boys, including a 63-59 overtime home defeat to No. 2 Bishop O’Dowd-Oakland on Jan. 13. In that game, the Pilots actually led by 18 points in the first quarter only to succumb.
It looked like deja vu Saturday, but Vaughns’ performance helped bail out the Pilots. Kiener made five three-pointers and finished with 23 points. Ba, the team’s only senior, added 12 points and 11 rebounds.
St. Patrick-St. Vincent was led by Akil Edwards (22 points, seven assists), Marshel Martin (19 points, 10 rebounds) and 6-8 sophomore Dishon Jackson (18 points, 10 rebounds, five blocks).
The two teams very well could meet in the North Coast Section Division IV playoffs. The quarterfinalists there advance to the CIF Northern California playoffs, which is set up by a new competitive-equity model.
St. Joseph certainly won’t be selected into the Open Division as it was last season, when it finished 30-2 but lost in the first round to Mitty. The Pilots, who reached the state Division V final four of five years starting in 2012, lost four-year starters Jade Smith and Darne Duckett to graduation.
The new-look Pilots likely will wind up in Divisions 2 or 3 at the Northern California playoffs.
“Haven’t even thought or looked into it,” Lippi said. “That’s another thing about being 70. You very much live in the moment.” Irish tough: Mitty, the topranked girls basketball team in the country, won 82-63 over visiting Sacred Heart Cathedral on Saturday — but most people were focused on the score at the end of the first quarter: SHC 15, Mitty 14. And halftime: Mitty 32, SHC 31.
The Monarchs (22-0, 8-0) had won their first seven West Catholic Athletic League games by an average of 44 points, including 93-47 at SHC last month. The Irish (9-12, 5-3) have improved greatly since then and showed it with big performances from junior post Talo Li-Uperesa (17 points) and Errayanna Hatfield (10 points).
They couldn’t overcome the efforts from junior All-America Haley Jones (24 points, 16 rebounds, five assists, five steals, three blocks), 6-2 senior post Nicole Blakes (20 points, seven rebounds, five steals) and Penn State-signee Karisma Ortiz (13 points, 15 rebounds, four assists).
“We didn’t back down against the nation’s No. 1 team,” SHC coach LyRyan Russell told Harold Abend of prep2prep.com.
Mitty coach Sue Phillips told Abend: “For our aspirations, we have to play better.”