St. Francis basketball ousts No. 2 Heritage Christian; reaches semifinals
It’s been a radiant playoff journey thus far for the St. Francis High basketball team.
Yet, the success is not too surprising for the Golden Knights, who have yet to leave the city of La Cañada Flintridge.
With every surge St. Francis has embarked on, it’s moved it a step closer to winning the program’s first CIF championship.
Host St. Francis delivered another impressive outing Tuesday evening, as it used a massive 26-6 second-half surge to roll to a convincing 73-51 CIF Southern Section Division II-AA quarterfinal home victory against No. 2 Heritage Christian.
St. Francis (25-7) will travel to face Roosevelt (24-7) in a semifinal game at 7 p.m. Friday. It marks the first time the Golden Knights have reached the semifinals since 2014, when it went to the Division III-A title game against Oak Park.
Roosevelt picked up a 64-57 overtime win against Alemany on Tuesday.
Andre Henry, who will attend UC Irvine next season, paced St. Francis with 22 points and 11 rebounds. The Golden Knights received 15 points from Jason Gallant and nine from Jackson Mosley to derail Heritage Christian (26-5).
“It’s my fifth year at St. Francis and we just wanted build the program’s culture,” said St. Francis coach Todd Wolfson, whose team placed third in the Mission League before posting playoff victories against neighbor La Cañada and San Gabriel Valley Academy. “Everybody is charged up and that starts in practice and it showed what we can do in games like tonight.
“We have a very good team and the players know their roles. We’ve gone up against some real good teams just to get here.”
Heritage Christian (26-5), which shared the Olympic League title with Village Christian before earning playoff wins versus Campbell Hall and Mission Viejo, held a 22-13 lead with 6:30 remaining in the second quarter before St. Francis embarked on its mammoth run.
Mosley made a three-pointer to give the Golden Knights a 29-28 lead with 2:43 to go in the first half. St. Francis went into halftime with a 39-28 advantage.
“In the first quarter, we just weren’t rebounding,” Henry said. “We started to pick it up in the second quarter and it was an unreal fun feeling with the crowd behind us.
“We all just got locked in right there.”
Said Gallant, who scored under the basket to give St. Francis a 35-28 lead with 1:40 to play in the second quarter: “We had a lot of adrenaline before the game and then during the second quarter. You see that hard work that we’ve put in and it all worked out right there.”
St. Francis, which made its second straight appearance in the quarterfinals, held a 52-41 lead entering the fourth quarter.
Henry gave the Golden Knights a 56-43 lead with 6:05 to go in the fourth quarter.
Henry followed late in the game with a dunk down the middle to make it 70-53.
“These guys don’t want their season to end and they don’t want to go home,” said Wolfson, who got eight points from Frederick Harper. “We’re up against a team like Heritage Christian and you can never say the game is over.”
Heritage Christian received 20 points from Skyy Clark and 17 from Dillon Depina.
