Stone Ridge Christian High School boys basketball celebrates back-to-back section titles
With Stone Ridge Christian High star Daijon O’Neil sidelined after a controversial ejection in the semifinals and subsequent suspension, his backcourt mate Jaiden Sahota took it upon himself to pick up the slack.
Sahota scored a game-high 25 points to lead the top-seeded Knights to a 49-43 victory over No. 2 Sacramento Waldorf in the Sac-Joaquin Section Division VI championship game at the Golden One Center in Sacramento on Thursday afternoon.
The Knights celebrated back-to-back section championships.
“I told him before the game he’s got to step up. He’s got to be the guy,” said Stone Ridge Christian coach Tyler Rogers, whose team won its 20th consecutive game to improve to 23-8. “That’s what he came here for, he came over here for this moment, and the moment wasn’t too big.”
O’Neil was suspended for the championship game after having been ejected in the final minute of the Knights’ 65-56 victory over Elite of Vallejo.
A referee whistled O’Neil for a flagrant foul and ejected him for elbowing an Elite player in the face. Stone Ridge Christian appealed the ejection and suspension Monday, submitting video footage that showed there was little to no contact with the elbow to the Elite player’s face.
The Sac-Joaquin Section office sent the footage to the referee to see if he would change the call, but the referee stood by the decision. The appeal was denied because it was a judgment call by the official.
“I’ll say this, yesterday was very emotional when we had a conversation about him not playing,” Rogers said. “It went from emotional to, ‘Hey, we got to lock in and get this championship for this team and for all of us.’”
O’Neil watched the championship game from the Knights’ bench, but did his part coaching up his teammates during the game.
“This is a very resilient group,” Rogers said. “I think the biggest thing for me is we talk about adversity and how we respond to it, and this group has proven time in and time out if they can respond to adversity.”
The Knights marched their way back to a section title despite losing senior starter Luke Agueda early in the season to a torn knee ligament.
They overcame a 1-7 start and caught fire at the end of the year, including a 12-0 run to a Southern League championship.
Thursday’s final started slowly, with the Knights trailing 9-4 after the first quarter. Then Sahota got hot, scoring 10 second-quarter points to give SRC an 18-16 lead at the half.
Sahota finished with three 3-pointers, and made nine of 14 shots from the floor on his way to his 25-point performance.
“I literally had to play a perfect game with DJ out,” Sahota said. “I had to do everything I could to step up. DJ has done so much for me and I knew that he deserved this championship and so did our team.”
Marcus Parker added two 3-pointers and eight points to help the Knights stretch the lead to 44-33 with 5:45 left in the game. Stone Ridge Christian’s 6-foot-7 center, Tyler McCabe, also played big inside, finishing with six points, seven rebounds and five blocks.
“This is amazing,” McCabe said. “This is a dream come true, going back to back. Not many teams get to do that. These are my brothers. I would run through a wall for them.”
The Knights are now 69-25 in Rogers’ three seasons as head coach after compiling a 28-191 record the 10 previous seasons before Rogers took over the program.
Stone Ridge Christian will now wait to see who it opens the Northern California playoffs against next week.
“It starts with the players, their commitment to work year round,” Rogers said. “We were known as a football school for the last how many years … but these guys are making a case that basketball is up there, too.”
