O’Neil Provides Just the Right Parting Shots

Mater Dei High School’s Dan O’Neil began his final high school basketball game on the bench, a place he has grown accustomed to during his career.

But his game ended at the free throw line and a state championship on the line.

O’Neil made two free throws with eight seconds remaining to seal Mater Dei’s 62-60 victory over San Francisco Riordan Saturday night in the State Division I boys’ championship game at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

O’Neil, a 6-foot-2 senior, came off the bench to score a team-high 19 points as the Monarchs (34-1) won their 26th consecutive game.

Mater Dei was clinging to a 60-57 lead with nine seconds left when O’Neil was fouled by Jaime Edwards on an inbounds play.

“I just kept telling myself to hit two,” O’Neil said. “I knew if I hit both of them, the game was over.”

O’Neil walked to the line and made both ends of a one-and-one to seal the championship.

O’Neil’s athletic future is on the football field. He signed a football letter of intent with the University of Oregon in February.

“My parents, coaches and players kept telling me all week, ‘Hey, this is your last basketball game,’ ” O’Neil said. “I wanted to end it on a good note. You can’t get much better than this.”

Mater Dei had a 19-16 lead with 6:28 left in the first half when O’Neil started shooting. And shooting.

He scored 10 points in a 12-2 Mater Dei run in the second quarter as the Monarchs built a 31-18 lead. Mater Dei led, 33-22, at halftime.

The outburst came as no surprise to Mater Dei Coach Gary McKnight.

“O’Neil has done that a lot of times this year,” McKnight said. “He’s a streak shooter and he does a lot of nice things for us.

“He loves to shoot. You could have broken his right (shooting) arm and he would shoot it left-handed.”

After the game, O’Neil led the players in a series of group high fives near midcourt. Then O’Neil and center Derek Stone ran into the Mater Dei student section to high five the fans.

“We call it a ‘Hi hug’ ” O’Neil said of the team’s post-game celebration. “(Teammate) Taylor Ivey and I started it by ourselves five games ago and suddenly the whole team is doing it.

“It’s fun to win one and give a ‘Hi hug’ at the end.”

The end of basketball, that is.

O’Neil hadn’t even left the arena Saturday night and he was already thinking about summer football workouts.

“I have to get basketball out of my mind now even though I love it,” he said. “I need to add another 15 pounds for football this summer. I lost all that weight playing basketball.”