San Leandro High Boys Basketball Team Faces Key Game

A stiff “midterm” exam comes early in the season for the San Leandro High boys basketball team on Wednesday night when the Pirates travel to San Jose to take on Archbishop Mitty, the defending Division II state champions who are ranked in the top 15 nationally.

For Sean MacKay, the Pirates’ fourth-year head coach whose team is off to a 7-0 start, it’s the renewal of a rivalry that dates back to his childhood in Menlo Park.

“I grew up with the head coach at Mitty, Tim Kennedy,” MacKay said. “It probably dates back to when we both started playing.”

While Kennedy went to Serra High in San Mateo where he starred, MacKay went to St. Francis in Mountain View, and the two future coaches were rivals in the powerful West Catholic Athletic League.

Kennedy went on to Loyola Marymount and then to play professionally several years in Europe. Meanwhile, MacKay went to De Anza junior college and then started his coaching career as an assistant at St. Francis even as he was going to the University of San Francisco (but not playing basketball) to earn his bachelor’s degree.

MacKay has now been coaching basketball 14 years and is in his eighth year at San Leandro High, the first four years as an assistant for Todd Petersen, who was Foothill College’s coach when MacKay played at rival De Anza.

MacKay’s goals for his team this season go beyond the basketball court.

“Really, I want to make sure the guys are representing the school and the community well,” MacKay said.

The coach has high hopes in the upcoming Hayward Area Athletic League season.

It has been three years ago since San Leandro ruled the HAAL roost in boys hoops. But the drought seems longer because when the Pirates last won in 2009, it had been their fourth title in five seasons.

They are looking to regain that glory this season, even if, as MacKay said, “none of these kids started last year.”

His Pirates are “mainly a junior squad,” MacKay said, with one senior, Andre Russell, leading the way, and a promising freshman, Stephen Johnson, who quarterbacked the football team, coming off the bench.

Russell, at 6-foot-3, is the tallest of the Pirates’ regulars. He is 210 pounds and is averaging 21 points and 11 rebounds a game, the coach estimates.

MacKay says of the freshman Johnson, “He’s a good kid and has a good IQ. His dad is a math teacher.”

Of the juniors and the rest of the team, MacKay said, “They’re all about the same, 5-11 or 6 feet. ... so I’ll say 6 feet. Andre and (guard) Dejon (Budreaux) are both more physically gifted … They both play at the rim, but the others are all good athletes. They’re cat-quick.”

Budreaux, the point guard, and Isiah Thompson are the second- and third-leading scorers, averaging at or just below 10 points a game, the coach said.

The other two starters are Ishi Ali and Kiki Hall. Ali is the younger brother of Hamed Ali, the leading player on last year’s 17-10 team that finished third in the HAAL behind Castro Valley and Bishop O’Dowd. Hamed  is now playing at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi

Besides Johnson, Jermaine Boddie and 6-1 Kenon Nobles are relied on to provide quality minutes off the bench.

“We’re mainly an all-guard team,” the coach says. “But they’re all pretty physical, and they’re not small.” Not surprisingly, the Pirates like to employ a full-court press almost all game.

Castro Valley won the North Coast Section Division I crown last year and reached the NorCal final. O’Dowd is almost always a contender. But the Pirates' coach looks at the HAAL as being “pretty balanced” this season.

San Leandro already is off to a 2-0 start in league.

(The Junior Varsity game starts at 5:30 pm and the Varsity at 7:00 pm.)