Scots’ fast start is overcome in CIF loss
CARSLBAD — The CIF-SDS Division V girls’ basketball crown has left the Valley. The Vincent Memorial Scots, potential heirs to Southwest’s 2019 title, were stopped short of the summit during Thursday’s finals, falling to the Cardinals of Hoover High, 63-61.
So ends a storybook campaign, one which saw the Scots shoot the moon with an undefeated regular season and dominant quarter- and semifinal playoff wins prior to their championship game loss. Their final record of 25-1 beats on as a testament to the asymptotic unreachability of perfection. Robert Frost said it best, “Nothing gold can stay.”
Of course even Frost might have been felt like looking over his notes if he had caught the glimpse of the Scots in the first quarter of Thursday’s game.
The first eight minutes there might have been carbon-copied out of any Scots’ last dozen wins, except that Vincent was even more dominant vs. Hoover than they had been against any of their lesser foes.
Everything went the Scots’ way. Their hyperkinetic playstyle shook the Cardinals just as hard as it had everyone else. The Scots were getting their steals and making their buckets. Alexandria Swift was typically menacing, scoring nine points and setting up buckets for Kamila Jaime and Brianna Balli. Bella Gonzales hit two threes to ignite the plentiful Vincent rooters.
At the end of one the Scots were up an astonishing 23-6, looking like they had the full measure of grace that they might reasonably lay claim to, plus a little extra besides. This wasn’t how anybody thought things would go down.
A Vincent win was hardly the least likely outcome — the Scots had never lost before, so considering them a stonecold lock to do it here would have registered as a little foolhardy — but a Vincent blowout was another story.
Hoover was seeded higher (No. 1 vs. No. 2), had gone 27-3 against a tougher slate of opponents than Vincent and is overall a much better analogue for last year’s title-winning Southwest squad than the Scots as a bigger school (with an enrollment of 2,000plus) that had been a little too bad for a little too long and had therefore been relegated to the San Diego Section’s lowliest division.
Considered through that lens, the Scots’ first-quarter Globetrotting rates as a triple exclamation point event … and everything that came after rates as an ordained return to the mean.
The second quarter saw a near-complete reversal of fortunes for both teams. The Scots’ started coughing up the ball and the Cards started holding on. Hoover’s double-double duo of NaMaya Sowunni and Jurnee Harnage (Sowunni is averaging 14.1 points and 10.2 rebounds per game, Harnage is at 12.9 and 13.4) emerged from their first-quarter slumber to make their mark on both sides of the floor.
Hoover opened the frame on an 8-3 run across the first four minutes, and while that might not seem all that calamitous, it proved that they had made necessary adjustments and that they were done being run off the floor.
The Cardinals biggest area of improvement was in their transition defense. Vincent is extremely aggressive went it comes to outlet passes. The Scots chuck the ball down the court with wild abandon, never making a 2-foot pass when a 20-footer will do.
Against most of the teams they’ve gone up against, this has led to an endless procession of easy hoops, because the Scots will always run after the ball to a degree that other teams can’t or won’t.
Hoover, however, found that they could and did, meaning that, when
Vincent’s long outlets didn’t get picked off — which happened more than a couple times — whoever caught it would find themselves with two or three red jerseys complicating any sort of shot attempt. If the Scot who caught the outlet was Swift, there was still a decent chance that points would follow, because she has that make-stuffhappen gene, but the gravy-train days of uncontested layups were gone.
The game went to halftime with Vincent still up, 30-25, but the Cards had a monopoly on momentum and they would keep it throughout the third quarter, scoring 21 points (Sowunni and Harnage 13 of these, working a nice inside-out game) to Vincent’s 10 and went into the fourth up 46-40.
With Hoover up 52-42 early in the home stretch, the Scots finally seemed to awaken to the gravity of their situation and began to scrap back, going on a 9-0 spurt to make it a game again at 53-51.
Balli keyed the run with a tough midrange floater. Andrea Herrera kept it going with a layup. Then came free throws — a major factor down the stretch with both teams in the double bonus for much of the final quarter. Nelson and Swift each split a pair ahead of a Sowunni double-clank that set up two straight buckets by Swift.
A hard take by Sowunni through Swift (Vincent fans wanted a charge) hit pause on the Scot run at 55-51, but Swift took an outlet from Gonzales and turned it into two points (after Nelson and Hoover’s Sirr Mee had each whiffed on a pair of free throws) to make it 55-53 with 3:30 to go.
Then came a series of events that seemed to seal the Scots’ fate. Frontcourt starters Balli and Jaime fouled out, leading to Hoover points. Their absence enabled the Cardinals to grab around six offensive rebounds on a crucial under-two-minutes possession, before Sowunni scored to make it 61-55.
Then the Scots got a series of stops … that all ended in missed baskets (by Nelson, Herrera and Luisa Manriquez).
Things looked grim, but Swift was there to shine her light on the situation. There she was converting on a crucial “and-one” with 1:14 to go to make it 61-58. There she was intercepting a Sowunni pass and getting fouled at the rack (splitting a pair for her 30th point of the night) to make it 61-59. There she was scrapping for a crucial tie-up with the possession arrow favoring Vincent, leading to two free Herrera free throws (after she boarded a Gonzales) miss, which she sank with all of Hoover howling at her to make it 61-61.
When Hoover’s Serenity Cheun was called for a travel immediately after these all-important makes, Vincent got the ball with 51 seconds left and a chance to ice the game.
But Swift’s magic faltered with a miss at the cup, and another after a travel on Hoover’s Josephine Tran.
Harange corralled this second miss for the Cards and was fouled over the back on the way down. Already 6-for-6 from the line to that point, she calmly nailed two more freebies to give Hoover the lead and, after Sowunni ripped a Swift post-entry pass to Manriquez with the clock winding down, the game.