FULLERTON WOMEN’S TOURNAMENT : Canyons’ Win String Ended by Yakima Valley

One player cried and another buried her face in a towel. Others stared into space.

That was how the College of the Canyons women’s basketball team witnessed the end of its school-record 12-game winning streak.

And the end came in convincing fashion, an 84-53 loss to Yakima Valley (Wash.) in the championship quarterfinals of the Fullerton tournament Friday night.

Canyons (12-2), which advanced to Friday’s contest by upsetting El Camino, the state’s top-ranked team, and beating Valley, wasn’t able to come up with any last-minute heroics against Yakima (13-1).

“We were just flat,” Canyons Coach Jeff Dunlap said. “All our energy was exhausted against El Camino and Valley. We had nothing left.”

That wasn’t the only drain on Canyons. Dunlap was forced to shuffle his regular lineup after starters Dawn Coleman and Dominique Ice were limited to reserve roles by illness and injury.

Coleman caught the flu and Ice was nursing a sore hamstring.

In the second half, Canyons offense turned to ice, too. The Cougars trailed, 36-31, at the half, but Canyons went scoreless for periods of 5 minutes, 9 seconds and 3:14, during which time Yakima scored 18 points.

“We started to get frustrated and just threw the ball up,” Dunlap said. “We tried everything to stop them. We tried pressing, man defense and a match-up zone.”

Nothing worked. Canyons hit only nine of 31 field-goal tries (29%) in the second half and 21 of 66 (32%) in the game.

Yakima, meanwhile, shot 52% from the floor.

Tressie Millender led Canyons with 18 points, scoring nine of the Cougars’ first 11 points. Ice had 10.

Canyons will play Sequoias, a 68-52 loser to Golden West, in the third-place game today at 2 p.m.

In a fifth-place semifinal:

Valley 57, Fullerton 44--Freshman center Kim Jeremiah came off the bench to score 14 points on seven-of-10 shooting as Valley (13-3) advanced to the fifth-place game today against Ohlone.

Sandrine Rocher added 14 points and Ericka Miller had 13 for Valley.