Scheppler’s Shooters: Tiny Pinewood School may be better than ever

One of the biggest rivalries in girls basketball in the Bay Area, one or both of Pinewood and Eastside College Prepatory (East Palo Alto, California) have been in the Northern California Division 5 championship game for the past decade. They also are league rivals, guaranteed to face off at least twice a year — In fact, the only two years in Scheppler’s 23 years in charge that Pinewood didn’t win a league title came at the hands of Eastside in 2012 and 2013.

Pinewood cruised to a 34-point win in the first matchup on Jan. 9, but Scheppler knew that the rematch on Feb. 2 was bound to be intense. While he’s always confident in his team, there’s a different level of confidence he senses from his players when Hannah Jump nailed her first shot from deep.

“When she got that first good look and hit it, it was like, ‘Okay, here we go. She wants the ball,’” Scheppler said. “She sees the ball going in, and when you see the ball going in as you’re shooting it, you just have this power over the ball where you know it’s going in.

“She knew it was going in. Every time she shot, I knew it was in.”

Against Eastside, Scheppler watched Jump enter the zone right away, and the 5’11 guard/forward went 6-for-7 from deep in the first quarter alone and ended the night with eight 3-pointers and 28 points, with 25 coming in the first half.

“She was unconscious tonight,” Eastside head coach Donovan Blythe said of Jump. “As a coach on the other side, I was being entertained also.”

When asked what she was thinking about when she got hot, Jump said, “Nothing at all. Just snapping my wrist and not hoping. That’s one thing — when you miss, you start hoping it will go in. When you’re making it, you’re not thinking about anything.”

For Pinewood senior Brianna Claros, seeing Jump make 3-pointer after 3-pointer is nothing new, saying, “In practice, whenever we do shooting competitions, it’s always like, ‘Who’s gonna beat Hannah?’”

But Scheppler is a big proponent of selfless shooting, wanting each player to always feel comfortable to shoot if they’re open with no regard for anything else. He’s seen how a hot start from one player, like Jump’s, can help others.

“That can have a positive effect on the other girls, as well. They really start believing in their shots,” Scheppler said. “When you see a ball go in for somebody else, you start to think, ‘It’s just going to go in.’”

Jump only made two more 3-pointers after the first quarter, but junior Klara Astrom made five and junior Kaitlyn Leung added four more, and Pinewood set a school record with 19 3-pointers in beating Eastside 80-66.

“If you know about shooters, once you get on a roll, it’s hard to stop, and they were on a roll,” Blythe said. When asked about facing Pinewood when they shoot as they did, Blythe simply summarized, “They’re unbeatable.”

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Back in the early 2000’s, Pinewood had the option to move up in California’s playoff system and reached three-straight Division 2 Northern California finals, but lost each time. But they stayed down in Division 5 and reached seven state championship games in a 10-year span from 2005-2014, winning five of them.

But in 2013, California introduced the Open Division, which takes the top eight teams in Northern and Southern California, regardless of school size, and has them battle to determine who truly is the best basketball school in the state.

In each of the past three seasons, Pinewood’s been selected in the Open Division, raising an interesting question: is the chance to be the best team in California, even if it’s unlikely to happen, worth giving up the easier path to a state championship? Scheppler admits that he’s wondered that himself, but says, in the end, the competitive drive that Pinewood players and coaches have make them want to battle it out with the best.

Besides, Scheppler says, they proved it in 2016, when the Panthers shot 16-of-29 from deep to defeat the No. 1 team in the nation in St. Mary’s (Stockton) High School, a game that’s been called the biggest upset in California history.

“That was better than a state championship [in Division 5],” he said, pointing out that his team actually was playing short-handed with a few injuries.

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Even with the history of success, with all the state titles and the major upset, there’s many that believe that this particular team is the best Pinewood team that Scheppler’s had. They’re currently ranked fourth by Maxpreps (as of Feb. 15), though they aren’t ranked in any of the human polls.

“I think this is the best shooting group that he’s had,” Blythe said. “It seems like you can tell that they’re close, too. They don’t mind who shoots the ball.”

St. Joseph Notre Dame (Alameda, California) head coach Shawn Hipol, who’s team lost 64-36 to Pinewood earlier this year, added, “To us, they are the most difficult type of team to play against. They always make the extra pass, and if you’re not rotating after the second pass, they’re going to get you.

“Most high school teams rotate once, maybe a good team will rotate twice, but that third one is just not going to happen. They have quality kids that are just all around the perimeter shooting threes on you.”

But for Field-Polisso, who talks almost daily with her former coach, thinks this team’s quality on the other side of the ball is being overlooked.

“The thing that people overlook is their defense,” Field-Polisso said. “Of course, there’s their 3-pointers, which people talk about because that’s how they get their points on the board. But people don’t understand is what they are able to do defensively.”
Quality defense will matter in the playoffs, but with Scheppler in charge, Pinewood girls basketball will be known for shooting threes.

And, if they can get hot, they may just shoot their way to a state championship and, perhaps, becoming the number one team in the country in the process.