Prep sports: How Campolindo became epicenter of Bay Area boys basketball and significance of beating Bishop O’Dowd

MORAGA — Midway through the first quarter, with the score tied in a highly anticipated showdown against Bishop O’Dowd, Campolindo’s Aidan Mahaney soared toward the basket, presumably to score on a lob from Emmanuel Callas.

Mahaney hit something … the backboard, the rim, something.

Play stopped.

Mahaney clutched his right hand as blood dripped on the court. The junior star walked past the O’Dowd bench and then his own on the way out the gym door and to a medical facility.

One week after he returned from an ankle injury that sidelined him for the first five games, Mahaney was out again.

But Campolindo moved right along, just as it has since it opened the season with a victory over Salesian. The Cougars, who ascended to No. 1 in the Bay Area News Group’s rankings last week, rallied on their home court in the fourth quarter Saturday evening to defeat preseason No. 1 Bishop O’Dowd 56-47.

Campo is 9-0.

And it’s not a soft 9-0.

When it became clear there would be a season this spring with no possibility of playoffs for schools in his section, coach Steven Dyer contacted top teams throughout Northern California.

If a team wanted to play, Campo put the team on the schedule.

In addition to Salesian and O’Dowd, Campo mixed De La Salle, Archbishop Riordan, Capital Christian-Sacramento, Bellarmine, Doughtery Valley and St. Patrick-St. Vincent onto a league schedule that includes Miramonte and Clayton Valley Charter.

Halfway through the 18 games, Campo has won them all by at least eight points.

“I am a pretty persistent person,” Dyer said after the victory Saturday. “I reached out to every coach where I thought it would be a really good game, and I got a good schedule. I think we have their respect now after the last couple of years. Teams want to play us.”

Mahaney was the headliner last season when Campo won the Northern California Division I championship. One year after winning a Division II state championship, the Cougars were preparing to play for the state’s Division I title when the pandemic hit.

Campo didn’t play for a second state championship but celebrated its 2019-20 team with a co-state championship banner that hangs prominently on a wall in the gym.

With no high school season until this spring, Callas, a senior, spent the long hiatus on outdoor courts, working on every aspect of his game, and with a personal trainer.

He is 6-foot-5 and strong and has instincts that cut off passing lanes and carve scoring opportunities for himself and for teammates.

If there were a Bay Area MVP at this point, it’d be hard to find a better choice than Callas.

Saturday, he was the best player on the court. He set the early tone with a steal and dunk, finished with 20 points, and earned admiration from longtime O’Dowd coach Lou Richie.

“He’s big, strong, works hard,” Richie said. “I don’t know him, but I’ve seen video of him getting better and better. He’s tough. He’s a polished player. He’s a tough matchup. He can shoot the three. He can handle the ball. Makes good decisions. You wish you had 12 of them on your team.”

In the early stages of Dyer’s five seasons as Campo’s coach, Salesian was the big hurdle. Campo cleared the hurdle last season in the NorCal regionals, ending a four-game skid against the Pride under Dyer.

The victory over O’Dowd was Campo’s first against the Oakland powerhouse since 2006. When the teams played last season, O’Dowd won by a point.

“It was a very significant win,” Dyer said. “They were preseason No. 1 in NorCal. This is a weird season. But we knew we were kind of the underdog coming into this one. We knew we had to play a really good game in order to win.”

What Dyer didn’t expect was to lose Mahaney with 4:18 left in the first quarter and the score tied 4-4.

“I am sure he’s incredibly frustrated,” Dyer said. “I feel so bad for him. He’s worked so hard to get back and then … I have no idea how long he’s going to be out. It sounded like he had a pretty deep gash on his hand.”

The play happened in front of the O’Dowd bench.

“I am more concerned about Aidan and his hand,” said Richie, whose team fell to 4-3. “That’s the most important thing to come out of this game. That kid’s a great kid, a competitor. My heart goes out to him and his family. I hope his hand is OK and it’s nothing serious.”

MORE MAHANEY: Read here about Mahaney and his brother, Carter, who graduated in 2020

Shane O’Reilly, a 6-3 sophomore, stepped in for the fallen star and made an immediate impact. He scored 10 of his 15 points in the second quarter.

Campo also got the usual steadiness from the Bennett brothers, Cade and Chase, sons of St. Mary’s College coach Randy Bennett. They played terrific defense and scored 15 points between them.

Their contributions and another strong game from Callas kept Campo rolling right along.

“We’ve got an 18-game season. It’s my senior year. There are no playoffs,” Callas said. “We want to play the best of the best every single night, and Coach did a great job putting it together. We won the Division I NorCal championship last year and we won D2 state before that. So, you know, there’s not a team in California I don’t think that wouldn’t want to play us.

“In this situation, we’ve just got to take it game by game and appreciate every single day of practice and every single game we got. That’s why we got a really good schedule, where we play against good teams so we can maximize who we’re playing every single night.”

Next up: Tuesday at De La Salle, a rematch of last season’s NorCal Division I final, which Campo won just before the pandemic erupted.