Santa Clara is known for its success in basketball. Under head coach Lou Cvijanovich who began coaching the boys' team in the 1958–59 school year, the Saints won 30 league titles (most league titles of any high school program in the country), 15 CIF-SS titles (second most in California high school history), as well as three California state championships (1989, 1990, 1999). Twenty years later in 2019, and just three months after the Cvijanovich's death, the Saints won a CIF-SS championship in 2019 under Bobby Tenorio.