Jim Marino knows his basketball.
And after 17 seasons as the head coach for the Wildcats, he most certainly knows Los Gatos basketball.
So when he sat down to predict the finish in the De Anza Division of the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League this winter, he pretty much knew what to expect.
He figured that Palo Alto and Milpitas would contend for the division championship, and his Wildcats would wind up third.
Well, it hasn't quite happened yet, but Marino looks to be just about a week away from having his prediction come true.
Paly and Milpitas will enter the final week of the division season sharing first place with matching 8-1 records, following a 64-56 Milpitas win over the Vikings last week.
Lynbrook rests at the bottom of the heap, still looking for its first division win, and Los Altos has just a single win. Wilcox and Santa Clara, meanwhile, are struggling somewhere in the middle of the pack.
And Los Gatos? Well, the Wildcats are right where Marino expected them to be... sitting alone in third place at 7-3 with just two games left to play.
The Wildcats will need wins in each of those last two games to keep some distance between themselves and fourth-place Santa Clara. But they play two teams that they defeated earlier this season in the final two games of the league campaign.
Los Gatos will visit Wilcox on Feb. 16, 7 p.m., before closing out the regular season at home against Lynbrook on Feb. 18, 7 p.m.
The two games are also important to Marino's Wildcats because they would clinch yet another 20-win season for Los Gatos. The Cats enter the final week of the regular season with an 18-7 record, and 20 wins would help them when it comes time for seeding in the Central Coast Section playoffs.
The Wildcats gave themselves a shot at 20 wins in the regular season when they outdistanced Los Altos 64-51 in their only game last week.
Jonathan Groff and Matt Gingery tossed in 12 points apiece and Devan Denton and David Whiteside hit 11 each to give Gatos four players in double digits in the win over the Eagles.
Gingery had a three among his five field goals, and he added a point from the free-throw line to finish with 12 points for the Cats. Groff jammed five field goals and a pair of free throws.
Whiteside had three buckets and hit five points at the line in the Gatos win, and Denton drilled four field goals and three free throws.
Stephen Pulley tossed in four shots to finish with eight points for Los Gatos, and Beau Knight buried a three among his three field goals to finish with seven. Ben Winkelman added two points and Manuel Arredondo hit one.
Los Gatos opened up a 15-11 lead in the first period and stretched that lead to nine points by halftime, 30-21. Los Altos cut the lead by three points in the third quarter, but Gatos buried the Eagles 20-13 in the fourth to win easily by 13.
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