Mesa opens with ease

COSTA MESA — On the first five Rancho Alamitos possessions of the game, the Costa Mesa High girls’ basketball team forced the Vaqueros into turnovers.

Visiting Rancho Alamitos also went scoreless in a-more-than-10-minute stretch in the second half of Thursday night’s CIF Southern Section Division IV-AA first-round playoff game.

Numbers aside, the intensity the Mustangs allowed Coach Jim Weeks to smile, which he did after Mesa won, 57-32.

“When we play just solid defense, then we’re really tough,” said Weeks, whose No. 5-seeded team will play at No. 12-seeded St. Matthias of Downey on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in the second round. St. Matthias won at North County Christian of Atascadero, 56-47, in its first-round game.

Weeks put his shutdown defender, junior Amy Gentling, on Vaqueros guard Elisepa Eteaki, who scored a team-high 11 points but just two of them in the decisive first half. And Mustangs senior center Jasmine Werdel helped hold the Vaqueros’ senior center, Vanessa Brown, to just one point.

Gentling had five steals, and Werdel blocked six shots to lead the defensive charge.

“I knew coming in that they had a really good guard, and Amy gets to guard her,” Weeks said. “And they had a decent post, and that means she goes against Jasmine and it’s tough to score. Where are they going to get points? Without your two leading scorers, you’re going to have trouble beating us.”

The Mustangs (19-8) had no such deficiencies on the offensive end against the Vaqueros (11-11), the third-place team from the Garden Grove League. After a close first quarter, Costa Mesa put up 20 points in the second quarter while holding the Vaqueros to six, opening up a 34-17 halftime lead and cruising from there.

Senior guard Michelle Figueroa had 21 points, nine rebounds and four steals for Costa Mesa. She remembered the score of the Mustangs’ first-round game last year, an 81-19 win over Redlands Adventist Academy, one of four playoff wins the Mustangs strung together on the way to the Division IV-AA championship game.

But Figueroa said she liked Thursday’s relatively closer game more.

“This was a good win, compared to last year,” Figueroa said. “I like games where you have to play hard all the time, it’s not that big advantage. We started out strong and at the end, we had to keep playing strong. We couldn’t take it easy.”

Senior guard Denise Rosello finished with 11 points, making three of her four field-goal attempts — all of them three-pointers. Rosello has made a team-high 36 three-pointers this season.

“I don’t know what to say about Denise,” Weeks said with a laugh. “She comes in and drills three of her first four. We put her in, and so many times this year her first shot is just a swish. Nobody knows that she’s just going to come in and drill that first [three-pointer] on them.”

Kathy Trinh had five points, and fellow senior guard Tatiana Caicedo tallied a team-high four assists in the second half. Sophomore forward Julianne Judkins was active on the offensive glass and finished with seven rebounds.

Costa Mesa led by six, at 23-17, with about four minutes left in the first half. The Mustangs then proceeded to go on a 25-0 run that spanned well into the third quarter, before Rancho Alamitos senior Mia McCoy made a pair of free throws with 2:29 left in the quarter.

“We were like, ‘We’re not going to let them take any more shots,’ ” Gentling said. “We had really great intensity this game. We really did. We were into it and played really well.”

CIF Southern Section Division IV-AA

First round

Costa Mesa 57, Rancho Alamitos 32

SCORE BY QUARTERS

RA – Eteaki 11, Hoang 10, McCoy 4, Faletoi 2, Wallace 2, Thomas 2, Brown 1.

3-pt. goals – Hoang 1, Eteaki 1.

Fouled out – McCoy.

Technicals – None.

CM – Figueroa 21, Gentling 13, Rosello 11, Trinh 5, Werdel 4, Scheidt 3.

3-pt. goals – Rosello 3, Gentling 1, Trinh 1.

Fouled out – None.

MATT SZABO may be reached at (714) 966-4614 or by e-mail at matthew.szabo@latimes.com.