Chiefs hold on, make school history in regional semi win

LANTANA — This year’s Chiefs are going where no Santalu- ces girls basketball team has gone before.

Santaluces clinched a spot in the Class 9A regional finals — one win away from a trip to Lakeland for the state play- offs — with a 56-51 win over Wellington on Tuesday night.

“This is school history,” Chiefs coach Zoe Price said. “They’ve never made it past the Sweet 16.”

Both Santaluces and Wellington came off upset victories to make it to the regional semifinals. Both teams were district runners-up, but the Chiefs beat Palm Beach Gar- dens and the Wolverines beat Boca Raton.

It looked like this game might have shades of Wellington’s win over Boca, with the Wolverines falling behind by double digits. The Chiefs led 40-27 in the third quar- ter. But, like it did against Boca, Wellington mounted a comeback, going on an 11-0 run to end the third and taking the lead in the fourth.

Tuesday’s game, to a large extent, came down to a battle of the teams’ two senior stars: Santaluces’ Whitney Howell and Wellington’s Sydney Jones. Howell led Santaluces with 19 points, along with 26 rebounds, while Jones racked up 26 points. Seven of Jones’ points and five of Howell’s came in the fourth quarter as the two teams duked it out.

“She’s a really good player,” Howell said. “I expected it, coming into the game, but I think it was a good game. I think I did OK.”

Junior Emiah Downie was second for the Chiefs with 14 points, and senior Marie Vertus added nine. It was Vertus’ last four points that put the game away.

Santaluces led by one when Vertus was fouled while mak- ing a basket. She made the free throw for the traditional three-point play, extend- ing the lead to four, then got fouled again and added another free throw to give the Chiefs their final point.

The Chiefs will play the winner of the Weston-Cypress Bay-Deerfield Beach game on Friday. The two Broward County teams play tonight.

“Last spring, we had meetings with all of our returners, and we planted the seed of ‘We want to make school history,’ ” Price said. “Everyone kind of laughed, like, ‘Yeah, right, coach.’ And it’s cool to see those goals come to fruition this year.”