The Dublin High Boys Basketball team dropped its North Coast Section (NCS) Open Division Quarterfinal contest to Northgate 55-48 in the Sports Complex on Thursday night.
Dublin fell behind early by as much as 17 points (29-12) before rallying to take a 39-38 lead at the end of the third quarter. The Gaels and Broncos traded baskets for most of the fourth quarter until Northgate pulled away in the final minute. Courtney Anderson led Dublin with 17 points, Donovan Cooks added 12, and Jalen Stokes contributed 9 rebounds.
Despite the loss, by earning a bid into the NCS Open Division Dublin is an automatic qualifier for the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) State Tournament which begins on March 1st. All 6 Open teams along with the top teams from each NCS Division will be purely seeded along with teams from the Central Coast Section, Sac Joaquin Section, Oakland Section, San Francisco Section, and Northern Section by the CIF Commissioners and placed into the CIF NorCal Tournament. The winners for each Division of the CIF NorCal Tournament advance to the State Title game against the winners from Southern California. Although Dublin will likely be dropped from the CIF Open Division, it still retains an excellent chance of competing for a CIF Division 1 Championship.
As a final tune-up for the CIF NorCal Tournament in March, Dublin will face Granada on Wednesday, February 23rd in the Sports Complex at 7:00 in an NCS Open Division Consolation game. The NCS Consolation game is new and was added this season to avoid teams having a 2-week layoff between games. Since the NCS Tournament doesn’t conclude until February 27th, the Gaels would have been subject to such a delay. The winner of the game will officially be considered to have finished 5th place in the Open, and the results will impact both seeding and counts towards our overall record.
Tickets will be available to the NCS Open Division Consolation game on the Dublin High Athletics GoFan page starting next week. Prices are $12 for adults and $5 for students. ASB stickers and Digital Sports passes will not be accepted nor will be the games be live-streamed due to NCS restrictions.
