PETER KOENEN (2) threads his way through the Bethel defense for a shot during Benicia’s 68-63 double-overtime victory Tuesday night.

Benicia High’s boys varsity basketball team kept its postseason hopes alive with a 68-63 double-overtime victory over host Bethel on Tuesday.

The win gave Benicia a split with the Jaguars in the season series and upped the Panthers to 10-15 overall and 3-5 in the Solano County Athletic Conference. The top three teams in the SCAC qualify for the Sac-Joaquin Section playoffs and Benicia, Bethel, American Canyon and Fairfield are all tied for third place, one game behind second-place Vallejo (4-4 SCAC) with two games remaining.

“We can’t lose any more games so this was our season,” said Benicia’s Brandon Barrett, who led the Panthers with 20 points and 12 rebounds. “My senior year is on the line and I don’t want to go out not making the playoffs. We had to play hard and that’s what we did.”

“This is for the playoffs,” said Benicia head coach Steve Carter. “I told my seniors that if we lose, I’m gonna start playing my youngsters.”

Benicia’s seniors were listening. Barrett scored 11 points in the first 4:12 of the fourth quarter and had a total of 15 points in the final 16 minutes. Fellow senior Kendal Vargas made three critical free throws down the stretch and battled for key rebounds and steals.

“Brandon came up big and Kendal has been huge,” Carter said. “He doesn’t get a lot of credit but he’s my dirty work guy.”

“This was huge,” Vargas said of the victory. “We’d already lost to them this year and we didn’t want to lose to them again. It took us two overtimes, but we did it. There was pressure, but I knew we’d pull it out.”

Vargas hit two free throws with 9.3 seconds left in regulation to give the Panthers a 54-51 lead, but Bethel’s Dakarria Peterson hit a 3-pointer from 23 feet away with 2.2 seconds left to send the game to overtime. An inside bucket by Barrett gave the Panthers a 60-58 lead with under a minute left, only to have Peterson tie things again on a drive to the hoop, forcing a second overtime.

“They had a good shooter and there wasn’t much we could do about that,” Barrett said of Peterson, who led the Jaguars with 20 points.

Carter assigned sophomore Trey Pugh the job of guarding Peterson in the second overtime, and Peterson didn’t score again. Dakarai Hughes scored on a baseline drive to open the second OT and Pugh followed with a 3-pointer from the right wing to give Benicia a 65-60 lead. Bethel closed to with 65-63 with 1:15 left, but Hughes made two free throws and Vargas added a free throw with 23.4 seconds remaining to seal the win.

“We almost gave it away a few times,” Carter said. “We started playing selfish but then we punched Bethel back in the mouth. We finally finished a game at the end.”

Peter Koenen had 10 points and 10 rebounds for the Panthers, who host Vallejo on Friday. Hughes finished with 15 points and Jason Shelley added 10 points.

Benicia won at Vallejo, 65-63, back on Jan. 27 and is looking for its first season sweep of the Redhawks since 2013.

“If we come out aggressive and play as a team, we’ll win,” Vargas said.

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