The St. Joseph High School boys’ basketball team captured its first CIF Division 5AA championship in more than a decade on March 5, decisively beating La Canada’s Flintridge Prep 63-45 behind 15 points and six assists from junior guard JoJo Walker, and 14 points and 11 rebounds from senior Gabrys Sadaunykas.
“We defended well,” Knights head coach Tom Mott said after the game. “And [junior] Scott McBeth hit some huge shots for us.”
While the victory clearly held extra weight as a championship game, it played out quite similar to most of St. Joe’s games this season—an all-around team effort that hinged on passing, fast breaking, and chemistry.
For the season, St. Joseph is 29-3 and in a five-game sample spanning the CIF playoffs, they won their games by an average of 27 points.
What is it about these Knights that’s so special?
Senior center Colton Brickey may have put it best.
“We can pretty much read each other like a book now,” Brickey said.
Their togetherness, chemistry, and passion for playing for one another is what keeps these Knights firing on all cylinders.
“We don’t look at each other as a team; we’re a family,” said Walker, who moved to this area from Puerto Rico before his freshman year at St. Joe’s. “We do everything together, in school and outside of school, in the game and outside the game.”
Walker left his blood relatives behind in Puerto Rico and ever since, the basketball team has served as his second family.
“Over there [in Puerto Rico] I wasn’t going to have the same opportunities that I have here,” Walker said. “But it hurt because I left my family back home, everything back home, but I’m doing it for them. I’m trying to get my family out of there.”
That comfortable sense of family on the St. Joe’s team didn’t formulate overnight. The seeds that would eventually blossom into the 2016 St. Joe’s season were planted last summer, when the team traveled together to Shenzhen, China, for two weeks of hosting basketball clinics and playing games against local teams.
And as trips to far-off foreign lands tend to do, the adventure offered a special opportunity for the group to grow closer.
“[The trip] was amazing,” said Sadaunykas, who moved to Santa Maria from Lithuania a year ago. “It was a new culture, different people, different coaches, different everything. It was really interesting and kind of scary.
“It helped us bond,” Sadaunykas continued. “We spent two weeks totally together, doing everything together, going to sleep together, waking up together, playing a game every single day, and living all the time together.”
Coach Mott agreed wholeheartedly with Sadaunykas.
“Any time you’re with the same group of guys for two weeks straight, you learn a lot about each other and you learn how to get along with each other,” Mott said. “Especially when you’re in a foreign country where the food is different, the language is different—you kind of have to rely on each other.”
One moment on the basketball court in China tested the fortitude of the team, and it sticks with Mott as an early growing point for the Knights.
“We were playing a team of 25- to 30-year-old guys, and it was a real close game,” Mott remembered. “They were being overly physical, borderline dirty. They had a guy who was probably 6-foot-7 and 350 pounds—a huge guy. He got mad at [St. Joe’s senior center] Dante Hodge and pushed him. And Dante just kind of got right up on him and it got the whole team fired up. I saw that we were not going to back down to anybody, no matter how big or how old.”
St. Joe’s carried forward that unity into their season, which has helped them accomplish their goals at every step of the way. They traveled to Nevada and Arizona for New Years’ tournaments, winning first place in both. They were co-champions of the PAC 8 league with Mission Prep High School of San Luis Obispo.
The Knights are on to their next challenge of competing for a state championship. No matter who’s in their path, or how much size or athleticism an opponent has, St. Joe’s knows they have one edge over everybody: “In the last 12 months, we’ve probably played 80 games together,” Mott said. “When you play a lot together and you like each other, obviously you’re going to improve and get to the highest level possible.”
Contributor Peter Johnson can be reached at pjohnson@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Mar 10-17, 2016.
