River Valley girls storm back to pull off upset

Falcons close on 10-2 run to pick up 59-56 win over Piedmont

It’s been remarkable season filled with firsts for River Valley High’s girls basketball team, and on Wednesday night, the Falcons came through again by pulling off the biggest upset in program history.

Taking on No. 4 Piedmont in the opening round of the CIF Northern California Division III Regional Playoffs, the No. 13-seeded Falcons stormed back in the final minutes and closed the game on a 10-2 run to come away with a thrilling 59-56 victory on the road in Alameda County.

It marked the first state playoff win in program history for River Valley, and helped erase the bitter taste of last Saturday’s 72-58 loss to Christian Brothers in the Sac-joaquin Section Division III championship game.

“We were down by eight at the half, and I told them that we didn’t have to get it back all at once,” said River Valley coach Tom Zaragoza. “In the last 3½ minutes, we kind of gambled and went from a man-to-man to a 1-1-3 to slow them down and it worked. We made a couple personnel changes to put a little more pressure on them, and we frustrated them a bit.”

The Falcons trailed the entire night, before Jasmine Gill entered the game with 15 seconds left. She came down with an offensive rebound in traffic and scored on a putback to give River Valley its first lead of the game with 6 seconds remaining. Piedmont tried to hurry the ball up court on its next possession only to turn the ball over, and Leaundra Walker-brown calmly sank two free throws with 1.8 seconds remaining to ice the game.

The Falcons outscored the Highlanders 18-10 in the fourth quarter and were especially lethal from the free-throw line, where they made 17 of their 20 shots for the game.

Walker-brown helped key the comeback by finishing with a team-high 16 points to go with six assists, five rebounds and three steals. She also made all four of her free throws.

Gloria Leon-campos went 8 for 9 from the free-throw line while finishing with 15 points, three assists, a steal and a block, Devyn Dahlstrom added 15 points, two rebounds, two assists and a steal, and Gill provided a spark down the stretch defensively to round out the leaders for River Valley.

The Falcons (24-8) will have a much shorter trip this Saturday when they travel to Sacramento to take on No. 5 West Campus in the second round. Yuba College point guard Elishja Duplechan leads the 49ers into the California Community College Athletic Association State Championships this weekend in Ventura. The 49ers will be making their sixth appearance in the Elite 8 and will open against Cerritos on Friday at 3 p.m.

The Warriors (25-7) beat No. 12 Yosemite 60-45 on Wednesday night and are the Sac-joaquin Section Division IV champions.

Not that it will bother River Valley after what it pulled off on Wednesday night.

“Piedmont has a historical past. They’ve won two state championships, and it was satisfying because I felt we got slighted on the seeding,” Zaragoza said. “I’m glad we proved to everybody that we’re better than a 13 seed.” BOYS BASKETBALL Colfax 53, Colusa 45 In Colfax – The Redhawks saw their successful season come to an end with a loss to the No. 3 Falcons in the Norcal Division V opener.

Colusa, which was the No. 14 seed as the runnerup in the Northern Section, hung tough throughout before Colfax pulled away for good late in the third quarter.

“We were in it. It was back and forth the whole game until the end of the third quarter and that kind of decided the game,” said Colusa coach Brian Davis, noting that his team didn’t shoot particularly well and missed some key rebounds in the loss. “We made a run in the fourth, but just fell short.”

Tylor Gerrard led the way for the Redhawks by recording a doubledouble with 11 points and 13 rebounds. Conner Saso added 10 points, Gerry Moreno finished with nine and Mason Hone chipped in with eight.

Colusa ended the year 24-6 overall.