CIF State Championships: Lucas Leads Athenian to Division V Crown
The small Danville school's senior point guard starred at Golden 1 Center.
Is Evan Lucas the best-kept secret in Bay Area basketball?
If his performance in Friday afternoon’s CIF Division V Championship is any indication, he’ll ascend from hidden gem to household name in no time.
The senior guard excelled in Athenian’s 67-49 win over Verdugo Hills at Golden 1 Center with a game-high 20 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists.
“I’ve coached him since he was a freshman,” said head coach Jordan Boreman. “That didn’t surprise anybody on this team whatsoever.”
Lucas, who’s attended Athenian since sixth grade, scored the first nine points of the 18-3 run that sent the Owls into halftime with a 36-20 lead, delivered a clutch and-1 in the third after the Dons had trimmed the lead back to single digits and completed his double-double with 6:25 to go. Had the Owls not emptied their bench in the final minutes, he may have had a chance to enter state championship immortality with a triple-double.
“I was enjoying every moment,” Lucas said. “I’m glad this is the way I’m ending my high school career.”
Verdugo Hills (25-12) used a 9-0 run in the third to make it a 38-29 ballgame on a Georges Abdulnour transition layup, but the Owls turned to two of their senior captains to retake control. Surya Devasenapathy went coast-to-coast, Lucas followed with a three-point play and Devasenapathy sank two free throws after the Dons’ Jabez Agustin sank one of his five 3-pointers. Lucas followed that up with his own coast-to-coast drive, and Koen Feyock scored five points off the bench, including a 3-pointer off a Lucas assist, to send Athenian (28-8) to the fourth up 52-37.
An already undersized Dons team, limited further by an injury to William Gharabekyan, never trailed by less than 12 in the fourth quarter. Junior center Teni Salako delivered the exclamation point with a minute left, throwing down a one-handed dunk in front of Athenian’s student section and then blocking a shot on the other end before Boreman emptied his bench.
“The student section always asks me for dunks, so I just wanted to give some love to them,” said Salako.
The Danville school, known much more for its theater program than for its athletic department, was well-represented with a student section behind the east basket despite the noon tip-off.
They had no shortage of things to cheer for, mostly thanks to Lucas. When the Dons cut the lead to a single point early in the second quarter, he responded with a pair of threes, then drove for a three-point play to make it 27-17.
“Whoever picks him up in college, you have a diamond right there,” Boreman said of his star senior.
Verdugo Hills head coach Jared Gibson’s timeout did stop Lucas’ onslaught but couldn’t slow the rest of the Owls, as Sid Bharath scored on a putback, Salako scored four of his eight points and Lucas finished off the first half with an assist to Feyock.
Devasenapathy finished with 15 points, Feyock added 10 and Salako finished with eight points, 13 rebounds and four blocks.
“He clogged up the middle, and it really affected us,” Gibson said of the 6-foot-6 Salako’s presence. “You can take one of two things away against us. You can take the basket away or you can take threes away. We kept shooting threes; we just didn’t make enough.”
Agustin led the Dons with 15 points, shooting 5-for-11 from beyond the arc, but the rest of his team combined to go just 2-for-23 from long distance. Alexander Martinez finished with 12 points, while Abdulnour registered 11.
“I was blessed when I was in high school to play at Arco Arena twice, and the depth perception is really hard to get used to,” Gibson said of his team’s shooting struggles. “We needed to make about 12 threes in this game.”