Girls’ Basketball: CdM falls to second in PCL
At the end of the lowest offensive production in a girls’ basketball game by either Woodbridge High or Corona del Mar this season, one coach called it beautiful.
The first-place showdown in the Pacific Coast League between the Warriors and Sea Kings was more like ugly.
The teams combined for almost as many turnovers as points. They combined for five points in the third quarter. They combined for seven field goals in the second half.
None of those stats mattered to Woodbridge Coach Eric Bangs on Thursday. In his eyes, the Warriors’ 32-23 win at CdM was a thing of beauty.
With four league contests left, the Warriors are sitting pretty. Woodbridge (16-5, 5-1 in league), ranked No. 4 in the CIF Southern Section Division 2AA poll, began the second half of league in sole possession of first place.
A year after sharing the league title with CdM, the Warriors should win out and claim the crown outright.
“Twenty-three points is all they got!” Bangs said of the Sea Kings, ranked No. 4 in Division 3A. “That was our goal, not [to hold them to] 23, the exact number. But the only chance we had to win is to play that kind of defense.”
The Warriors stifled CdM (16-5, 4-2), which finished with 32 turnovers. The Sea Kings looked out of sync all night, unable to get the ball to their bigs, 6-foot-4 senior Natalia Bruening and 6-2 senior Krista Anderson.
The hosts also couldn’t go to Kat Hess. CdM Coach Mark Decker said Hess, a valuable senior, was on a recruiting visit at Harvard, for soccer.
Anderson, Bruening and Hess played well against the Warriors the first time around, helping CdM prevail at Woodbridge, 50-45, on Jan. 8. Back then, Anderson recorded 18 points and 11 rebounds, Bruening had 14 points and 12 rebounds, and Hess added seven points and seven rebounds.
Bruening (10 points and eight rebounds) and Anderson (four points, five rebounds) didn’t have opportunities to match the numbers from the first meeting because of the Warriors’ physical defense. They swarmed either player when they touched the ball, and when CdM tried to move the ball, it traveled, double dribbled, or threw the ball away.
Woodbridge’s aggressive play on defense outraged Decker.
“What can you say?” said Decker, whose team didn’t attempt a free throw until with 4:26 left to play, by then Woodbridge had made six of seven from the charity stripe. “They’re hacking. They’re holding. They’re grabbing. They let them do that to our post players. It’s frustrating.”
What else bothered Decker was one stretch, the first 2 minutes and 13 seconds in the third quarter, in which the Sea Kings couldn’t get a shot off. They turned the ball over six straight times.
Woodbridge wasn’t doing that much better offensively, seeing Anjali Ghadiyaram hit a three-pointer to give the Warriors a 24-14 lead with 5:26 left in the third. She finished with 15 points, and her shot was Woodbridge’s only successful one in the third quarter.
The Sea Kings’ lone third-quarter field goal came at the 4:46 mark, on a layup by Samantha Uehara. The freshman, who had seven points, took all of CdM’s four shots in the fourth, a quarter in which it gave away the ball a dozen times.
“Not going to win any games scoring 23 points,” said Decker, whose team’s previous lowest-point total in game happened during the 2012-13 season, when the Sea Kings lost at home to Woodbridge, 71-19. “It was disappointing. I thought our guards … panicked a lot. It looked like we were nervous for some reason. We threw the ball around.”
Despite the high turnovers, CdM found itself down, 26-23, midway through the fourth quarter. The Sea Kings scored seven of the first nine points in the fourth.
The Sea Kings went to Bruening, who finally was able to attempt a shot, seeing it rim out 48 seconds into the fourth. The UC Santa Barbara-bound player’s previous shot came at the 2:50 mark in the second quarter.
Bruening ended her scoring drought with 7:05 left, converting a layup after receiving an inbound pass. Then Anderson scored down low 90 seconds later, and Bruening added another basket in the paint, while Uehard made one of two free throws to cut Woodbridge’s lead to 26-23.
It seemed CdM made it a one-point game with 3:42 to go. Bruening dumped the ball to Anderson and she went in for two. But there was one problem, the referee called Anderson for pushing off, an offensive foul, her fourth foul.
“We had the great post play, the high-low to Krista, and the ref calls an offensive foul, which is completely ridiculous,” said Decker, who saw Anderson and Bruening in foul trouble all evening. “It was a terrible call and that changed the momentum because we go down one, and we’re making a run, you know, things are different.”
Instead, the Sea Kings went the final 4:25 without scoring. Woodbridge produced the last six points, half of them coming on Ghadiyaram’s third three-pointer.
The Warriors appear on their way to winning their fifth league title since joining the Pacific Coast League in 2010-11.
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Pacific Coast League
Woodbridge 32, Corona del Mar 23
SCORE BY QUARTERS
Woodbridge 8 – 13 – 3 – 8 — 32
Corona del Mar 8 – 6 – 2 – 7— 23
Wood – Ghadiyaram 15, L. Baffo 9, Vaglica 6, Shimizu 1, Lum 1.
3-pt. goals – Ghadiyaram 3, Vaglica 2.
Fouled out – None.
Technicals – None.
CdM – N. Bruening 10, Uehara 7, Anderson 4, Grippo 2.
3-pt. goals – None.
Fouled out – None.
Technicals – None.
