For a little over 2 1/2 hours Saturday night, the wild, restless spirit of March Madness resided not in East Rutherford or San Antonio or St. Louis or San Jose, but in the cramped, humid confines of James C. Castle Gymnasium in Honolulu.

For the span of one regulation game and four — four! — overtime periods, nothing that spun from the media-fed maelstrom of the NCAA Tournament could touch the drama, heat and desperation of an early-season matchup between two Interscholastic League of Honolulu Division II girls basketball teams, a grueling contest ultimately decided not by overwhelming talent of a future NBA millionaire, but by the grit of a 5-foot-4 sophomore looking forward to spring break.

Minna Watanabe scored 40 points, 32 in the fourth quarter and overtime periods, to lead St. Andrew's Priory past Kamehameha, 84-81, eclipsing a 22-point effort by the Warriors' Jamie-Marie Ferrigno.

But the box score fails to capture the scale of the competition, one only appreciated by the 100 or so family, friends and students in attendance who left the building shaking their heads.

"I've never seen anything like it in 30 years in the game," said St. Andrew's assistant coach Chad Mizunaka.

Behind the strong post play of Kellee Tom, who finished with 17 points, St. Andrew's held a 28-21 lead after a tightly officiated first half that found the Pride going to the free-throw line 25 times for 17 points.

Kamehameha stormed back after the break, crashing the boards and converting on second attempts. Ferrigno scored eight points in the period as the Warriors took a brief four-point lead.

Down 38-37 in the fourth, Kamehameha employed a modified box-and-1 defense on Tom, forcing St. Andrew's head coach Ross Kinsler to adjust his game plan.

"We spread the top and let Minna go one-on-one," Kinsler said. "We expected them to rotate (to her) after the first couple of times she scored, but they never got there and we kept going to her."

With the Pride down by two with 17 seconds left, Watanabe drew a foul and converted both free throws to send the game to overtime.

The first overtime period found both teams playing to their strengths, with neither team able to break away.

Then, with 1:17 left in the period and the Pride up by a point — confusion. Tom, rock steady up to that point, fouled a Kamehameha player believing St. Andrew's was still trailing. Kamehameha converted the free throws to put the Warriors ahead by one. St. Andrew's again had to rely on a free throw to extend its game life.

Tom fouled out in the second overtime, leaving Maile Tua, who had been playing with four fouls since the fourth quarter, as the team's only low-post banger. Kinsler inserted guard Raquel Sevil into the lineup and the sophomore from Spain responded with six of her eight points in the final three overtime periods.

St. Andrew's trailed by three points with two seconds left in the second overtime. Once again, Watanabe found herself just left of the top of the key with the ball in her hands. Again she sliced into the heart of the defense, but this time she pitched the ball out to Noelani Kawashima, who nailed a 3-pointer — the Pride's only one of the game — at the buzzer.

"The play was for Minna, but when I got the ball in my hands, I thought, 'I'm a shooter, too' so I shot it," Kawashima said. "I thought it was going to be short, so I yelled 'short' to my teammates, but then it went in."

By this time, everyone in the building was aware that something special was unfolding — and it wasn't over.

"It was getting pretty tense and I looked down the bench, the referees were dripping sweat, both teams were fighting, and I thought, 'Everyone is working really hard tonight.' " Kinsler said. "That's what basketball is all about. That kind of put it in perspective."

Kinsler returned to his bench, not with a fresh set of plays, but a question: "Are we having fun yet?"

"The girls were quiet but Kellee Tom said, 'Yeah! We're having fun!' and everyone started laughing," Kinsler said. "I'm competitive and I want to win, but at that moment, they had been working so hard, what more could you ask of your girls?"

What more? The girls knew. They wanted to win.

Watanabe, who made all but one of her 12 field goals in the paint, continued to penetrate and draw fouls in the third, but Ferrigno, free from the harassing defense of Jordan Higa, who had fouled out in the fourth, wasn't finished yet.

Needing a 3-pointer to send the game to a fourth overtime, Ferrigno lost her defender on a screen at the top of the key and, with 10 seconds on the clock, launched a shot from a foot behind the arc. It banked in.

With nine players lost to fouls — six for Kamehameha and three for St. Andrew's — the fourth overtime proceeded like a battle of the exhausted and nearly exhausted. The Pride held a three-point lead late in the fourth. Kamehameha converted one of two free throws and had the ball in the final moments, finally succumbing when a half-court desperation heave fell short.

St. Andrew's players and fans rushed the court, but Mizunaka exhorted them to show some restraint.

"I could see the girls on the other side crying and my heart really went out to them after the game they played," he said. "It was an amazing, hard-fought game."

Two days removed from the biggest night of her young career, Watanabe still sounded like a reluctant hero yesterday.

"It's not what I usually want to do, but if it has to be, if (Kinsler) tells me to be aggressive and go to the basket, then I'll do it," she said. "But every one of my teammates did a great job, even when they were on the bench. The gym was packed and just having them with me on the court and on the sidelines, high fiving, cheering, passing out water bottles, it meant a lot."

Kinsler said the victory should help to firm Watanabe's role as a go-to scorer for the team (she hit a game-winning shot against King Kekaulike as a freshman last year) and hopes the rest of the team will understand just how competitive they can be against the league's bigger schools. Beyond that, he's not sure what to think of the game.

"It was amazing," he said. "But I don't know that it's sunk in yet."

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.