A nail-biter, a roller coaster. Stomach-churning, down to the wire, thrilling. Make what attempt you will to describe yesterday’s boy’s basketball’s CCS game against the Leland Chargers–you’ll probably come up short.

The Eagles stunned Leland yesterday afternoon at Santa Clara University’s Leavey Center, pulling off a 63-59 overtime win to dispatch the top-seeded Chargers and secure the school’s first boys basketball CCS championship title.

The Chargers came out with an intensity that Los Altos had few answers to, running away with the score from the onset. Leland took advantage of a sluggish Eagle start and dictated the pace of the game throughout the quarter.

“They got ahead of us just as they knew we would; they crashed the boards relentlessly,” head coach Bob McFarlane said. “We didn’t box out very well, we kind of let them do whatever they wanted to do and at the end of the day, we just didn’t follow our game plan very well.”

Senior Kyle Cumagun carried the Eagles through what would have been an otherwise unproductive second quarter, picking up the slack and delivering a blistering and momentum-shifting eight points. Kyle drained two long field goals, split four free throws and made a spin move to the net to keep Los Altos’ hopes alive going into halftime.

“I knew we started slow, so I just kept my head up,” Kyle said. “I just felt like [I had to] do my thing… Just keep shooting.

Sophomore Adam Rosenbaum contributed a clean layup towards the end of the quarter to keep Los Altos in the mix.

34-21. The Eagles entered halftime having executed just what was needed to to get by. What began as unequivocal slaughter in the first had finally begun to be responded to. But there was still work to be done–a double-digit lead to surmount, a deficit to be cut–a mountain to be climbed. And that is exactly what the Eagles did.

The opening buzzer of the third signaled the commencement of a meteoric turnaround; as perfect a comeback effort as the Los Altos could have hoped for. It was as if the Eagles had been shaken out of a stupor and finally realized what was at stake, what stage they were playing on. With a gauge on the Chargers’ gameplay, the Eagles began to claw their way back.

“[In] the first half, we came out a little bit sluggish and I think that it’s just that we were trying to figure them out, their offense,” sophomore Ahmad Washington said. “And when we figured that out in the second half, we shut them down.”

Senior Thomas Kelleher hit the court running from the starting buzzer of the third, cutting through Leland defense to score the opening points of the quarter. He electrified the crowd by hitting two enormous three-pointers, six points which breathed life back into Los Altos’ comeback effort and served as a much-needed ignition to a perfectly-timed rally.

“In the beginning of the game, I wasn’t being very aggressive… I thought they were giving me a lot of space, Thomas said. “They were putting all of their slower defenders on me, so I thought, ‘I’m going to take advantage of this and just go for it.’ [I just had] confidence in my shot.”

Six points from Daniel and a clutch performance from freshman Nolan Brennan, who delivered four points off two drives to the basket, effectively erased Leland’s lead.

Though the Eagles lit a fire under the crowd with a rousing offensive performance, they were also tightening up their defense.

“That was the theme of our second half: tighten up our defense a little bit. We mostly made defensive adjustments. We adjusted some things and came out and boxed out better and followed our game plan,” McFarlane said.

The fourth quarter commenced with the score at 43-39. While tweaks and adjustments carried the Eagles through the third, a blend of precision, heart and grit defined Eagle play in the fourth.

The Chargers played tough, fighting to cling onto their lead. But for every successful shot that Leland made, the Eagles had a response. The quarter was characterized by a back and forth brand of action, with Daniel and fellow senior Patrick McColl notching nine and five points, respectively, to keep the two teams neck-and-neck. Down two (52-54) with 21.1 seconds left on the clock, Daniel delivered the play of a lifetime in front of a hushed crowd, driving to the net to tie the Chargers and force a four-minute overtime.

“We knew we wanted to attack the basket, get a bucket, or get fouled and get two free throws,” Daniel said. “We definitely were looking to attack. With the ball in my hands… the entire left side just cleared out so I moved that way and then just made my move, attacked the guy and got the bucket.”

The tension in Leavey Center was palpable as back and forth play resumed overtime. Nolan and Patrick each contributed two points to thwart a potential late Leland surge. The Eagles took their first lead in the game off two free throws from Simon, which were received by thunderous cheers. Three more points in the form of free throws from Daniel finished off Leland for good. 63-59: the impossible had been done.

“I think we just rose to the occasion,” Thomas said. “Our intensity wasn’t that big in league because we didn’t think there was that much to win, but now that we see the stage we’re on, you know, how big it is, we rose and played like a championship team and I think that’s all we needed.”

A Season In Microcosm

When Los Altos first played Leland on Monday, December 14 last year, the season was in its infantile stages. The Chargers sealed their win in the first half of the game, outscoring the Eagles 23-8 in the first and 18-11 in the second, going on to take the game 71-54. The one-sided affair was perhaps equally indicative of how well-oiled Leland was (and is) as it was symptomatic of the Eagles’ relative impotence at the time.

Things never got easier after the loss to Leland: Los Altos got off to a rough start, struggled through the season and ended in the cutthroat De Anza League 4-8, the second poorest record in the league.

“This season was really rather tumultuous to be honest,” McFarlane said. “It was a difficult season, we lost some really close games in league. Our league was exceptionally difficult and prepared us well for this.”

Even without any guarantee of success, however, hard work and dedication remained the Eagle M.O.

“They kept their heads up. They kept coming in everyday and working hard, they believed in what I was telling them and they didn’t have to, because it was hard,” McFarlane said. “Life isn’t always pretty: you don’t always get to be on the mountaintop, and when we were getting beat in league and coming up 4-8, it didn’t feel very good. And yet guys still continued to believe.”

Only in the latter stages of the season did the Eagles begin to see their hard work pay dividends, racking up CCS wins in stride: 78-46 against Mt. Pleasant, 45-37 against Willow Glen and 59-47 versus Santa Clara.

The resemblances between the team’s season and yesterday’s game are striking–it’s parallelism in its purest of forms: early adversity effectively combated with equal parts heart, resilience and focus.

“We just didn’t give up,” Kyle said of the game. “We kept playing, even when we were making mistakes, we just kept playing through it.”

Just keep playing: the method by which the Eagles have penned a thrilling addendum to a once unpromising chapter.

Several months removed from being thrashed by the Chargers, Los Altos is an entirely different team. When asked about how far his team has come, McFarlane had little to say.

“There’s no comparison,” McFarlane said of the Los Altos team that played Leland in December and yesterday. “[There’s] no comparison whatsoever.”

Venturing Into Uncharted Territory

Boys basketball made school history simply by showing up to Leavey Center for CCS finals yesterday–the Eagles’ win over Santa Clara High School four days prior in CCS semifinals granted Los Altos its first ever push into CCS finals. The two previous installments of the program’s storied narrative ended in heartbreak, with Willow Glen (2013) and St. Francis’ (2014) ekeing out two-point wins tinging the season, team and its constituents with disappointment.

Los Altos has now not only advanced to the final stage of the tournament, but taken the title in the most riveting fashion possible. Regardless of what happens in CIF Championships, the Eagles’ overcoming a 15-point deficit with a second-half surge to stun the tournament’s top-seed in overtime will undoubtedly stand as the program’s keystone moment.

Various members of the Los Altos community–students, teachers, relatives of players and more–filled the stands and were given the chance to share in the enormity of the win. Blue Crew was in full swing, and chants of ‘Let’s go, Eagles’ reverberated across the gymnasium throughout the game.

“I’ve been coaching 15 years and it’s the best atmosphere I’ve ever been involved in and it’s awesome that it was [during] our first CCS final and championship,” assistant coach Richard Fujii said.

Also in attendance were alumni and former players of the program, including Steven Garverick and Raag Uppuluri (‘14) and Kieran Stolorz (‘13). In what was likely a bittersweet experience, these graduates were able to see something that they had come so close to doing finally come to fruition.

“It’s tough to put into words,” McFarlane said. “We’re representing our school here… we’re representing a lot of Los Altos teams of past, and the community itself… It’s a real blessing to be able to be the first coach to bring the school a CCS championship. I’m feeling very humbled.”

As of press deadline, details such as seedings, bracket specifics, times and locations have not been made known. The Eagles will play in a CIF NorCal game four days from today on Wednesday, March 11.

“We won’t know nearly as much about the teams that we’re playing, just because they’re from completely different sections and we don’t have a lot of teams in common,” McFarlane said. “[Once we find out who we will be playing], we’ll go ahead and start scouting and preparing for that team.”

With so many variables and so much ambiguity, with essentially the entirety of what’s to come rooted in the unknown, CIF may seem like a daunting foe for the Eagles to have to go toe-to-toe with. The sentiment among the team regarding strategy and mentality, however, is universal and simple: a steadfast adherence to what’s already being done.

“[We are going to] just keep doing what we always do,” Simon said. “We don’t need any heroics–just [to] play hard.”