STATE BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS : This Time, Pacifica Comeback Falls Short : Division III boys: Mariners rally in second half, but lose, 81-61, to Sacramento Foothill.

Pacifica, that bully of a boys’ basketball team, finally ran into someone who wouldn’t cry uncle.

The Mariners, who wore down and tore down one opponent after another, ran into a team they couldn’t break Saturday. Sacramento Foothill handled the pressure and then manhandled Pacifica, 81-61, to win the State Division III boys’ championship at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

It was a role reversal the Mariners could have lived without.

“They kicked and scratched until they got the ball,” Mariner Coach Bob Becker said. “They kept attacking us. They never let up. They disrupted our offense that way. We couldn’t do what we wanted.”

Sound familiar?

“That’s exactly what we’ve been doing to teams all year,” Pacifica forward Chris Vlasic said.

Indeed, the Mariners (30-2) had disheveled teams with their 32-minutes-of-stress style, winning 28 consecutive games.

Their tenacity brought back-to-back comebacks in the Southern California Regionals. Pacifica had rallied from 22 points down in the semifinals against San Diego St. Augustine and erased an 11-point halftime deficit in the final against University of San Diego High School.

Saturday, the Mariners set up another sucker punch. Instead, they got cold-cocked.

A Rick Gonzales basket gave Foothill a 42-24 lead 21 seconds into the second half. Pacifica then went into its whirlwind mode.

Vlasic scored 17 of his 28 points in the third quarter. Pacifica cut the deficit to 55-49 at the buzzer, and Foothill seemed to crack.

But this wasn’t going to be a re-run of previous engagements.

The Mariners closed to within five, 63-58, with 4 minutes 8 seconds left. It was their high-water mark.

Foothill turned the tables, leaving Pacifica in the dust with an 18-3 stretch run.

“We told our kids we wanted to be within eight at the end of the third quarter,” Becker said. “We were down by six. We felt we were right where we wanted to be.”

They stayed there, partly because of Mustang guard Alvin Houston.

Houston, a junior, scored 27 points and seemed to blunt every Pacifica run. He scored eight points in the fourth quarter, countering a Mariner basket each time.

“When they scored, Alvin scored right back,” Foothill Coach Drew Hibbs said. “That’s a tremendous psychological lift. But Alvin has been our big-play player recently.”

Houston, who averages 12 points, scored 26 against San Lorenzo in the Northern California Regional final, 14 in the fourth quarter.

It has been a redemption run for Houston, who dribbled the ball off his foot in the final seconds of the Mustangs’ 61-60 loss to Vacaville in the Sac-Joaquin Section final.

He made nine of 13 shots Saturday, including three of four three-pointers.

“Every playoff game, we seemed to run into a player with Division I capabilities,” Becker said.

The Mariners missed their first five shots and turned the ball over five times in the first four minutes. They didn’t score until Jon Surface sank a three-pointer with 3:54 left.

They were the only points of the first half for Surface, who had the flu. He came into the game averaging 15 points but scored only 10.

Houston scored 15 in the first half, as the Mustangs led, 40-24. They led wire-to-wire, jumping to an 8-0 lead.

“There aren’t many teams that can put it together against us for four quarters,” Vlasic said. “They did.”

The Mariners were unaccustomed to many things Foothill did.

The Mustangs had a 27-12 advantage in rebounding in the first half, including a 15-2 edge on the offense boards. They had finished with a 46-34 edge. Mike Schanzenbach, playing on a severely sprained ankle, finished with 13 rebounds.

And when it came to playing rabid defense, the Mustangs could foam at the mouth with the best of them, including Pacifica. The Mariners had 21 turnovers. Foothill had 12 steals, four by reserve Corey Jurgens and three by Schanzenbach.

“We knew they were a pressure team,” Hibbs said. “We wanted to attack them right back.”

A philosophy that Pacifica has lived by and lost by.