With his team trailing by 19 points entering the fourth quarter, Archie Williams High senior Owen Bugas did everything in his power to keep his team’s dreams of a section title alive on Tuesday night.
Bugas scored 24 of his game-high 47 points over the final 8 minutes, almost leading the Peregrine Falcons to an improbable comeback. Archie Williams fell 64-61 at home against Piedmont in the North Coast Section Division III semifinals.
Despite the loss, Archie Williams (17-11) had already qualified for next week’s NorCal playoffs having made it to the semifinal stage of the tournament.
“I think Owen was the most valuable player in the league this season,” Archie Williams coach Russell Bauer said. “He had a special season. He can shoot – and he’s so tough. He left it all out there tonight.”
The Falcons trailed 52-33 entering the final eight minutes of action.
Bugas, however, refused to yield.
Calling on equal parts will and skill, Bugas scored 24 of Archie Williams’ 28 fourth quarter points, knocking down six three-pointers in the final period, including a couple from Steph Curry-range.
“All season we’ve come back from big deficits,” said Bugas, who accounted for 77 percent of all Falcons’ points. “We thought we were going to win no matter what the score was.”
And the Falcons quite possibly would have emerged victorious if not for Piedmont big man Brit Burden, a six-foot, six-inch senior, who led the Highlanders (20-9) with 28 points and 10 rebounds.
The noticeably smaller Peregrine Falcons could find no defense whenever their beast of Burden was anywhere near the bucket with the ball in his hands.
“That’s what went wrong for us tonight,” Bugas said. “We couldn’t stop No. 23 (Burden). He’s strong, athletic, and he has really good footwork around the basket. Nobody we had could guard him and that was the difference in the game.”
Even as Bugas was warming up for his finishing flurry, Burden was a pain in the neck for the Falcons, countering a Bugas turnaround jump shot field goal by grabbing his own rebound and scoring on the follow up lay-in with two minutes remaining.
It was the Highlanders final field goal although they did score a couple points from the line in the final minute as the Falcons finished on a 16-2 run.
“Maybe we were just too young inside to contend with (Burden),” Bauer said. “We were trying to front him, but he’s really good. If we would have had a bigger, more experienced player to deal with him we might have won this game tonight.”
While the Falcons were at their best in the fourth quarter, they struggled early in the second period as Piedmont fashioned a 13-1 run spearheaded by Burden’s six field goals for 12 points – all scored in the paint.
“Against a team like that and a player like that you can’t relax for a moment,” Bauer said. “We kind of took a deep breath to start the second quarter and it ended up costing us.”
Archie Williams’s second half resurgence was helped along by 6-5 sophomore Alexander Hamblet, who came off the bench and grabbed seven rebounds — including two at the offensive end in the fourth quarter.
And even though Bugas was carrying the bulk of the offensive load, the entire squad played well in the final quarter, forcing four turnovers without turning the ball over once.
“We’re relentless and gritty,” Bauer said. “We just didn’t do enough early and we started our comeback a little too late.”
