The Riverside Press-Enterprise
SOARING EAGLES
Etiwanda pulls away in second half to beat Sierra Canyon for Open Division championship
The Etiwanda girls basketball team’s goals this season have been to not only win the CIF Southern Section Open Division title, but also the CIF State title after winning one of each of the last two years.
Friday night, the Eagles accomplished the first part of that goal in dominating fashion
Second-seeded Etiwanda used a dominating third quarter to pull away for a 65-44 victory over top-seeded Sierra Canyon at California Baptist University’s Fowler Events Center.
“We had a really, really good week of preparation,” Etiwanda coach Stan Delus said. “In my eight years at Etiwanda, I’ve never seen a group so locked in. You could tell in their everyday demeanor they really wanted this. We said we weren’t going to defend last year’s (state) championship, we were going to earn this year’s championship.”
It is the second section title for Etiwanda, winning that two years ago and the CIF State
championship last year.
In an ice-cold shooting first half for both teams, Mykelle Richards helped Etiwanda stay afloat, making both of her firsthalf 3-point attempts. Sierra Canyon made just 5 of 27 field
goal attempts (18.5%) in the first half, while Etiwanda made just seven of 30 (23.3%). The Eagles led 20-15 at halftime.
Sierra Canyon (30-2) scored the first basket of the second half to cut Etiwanda’s lead to three points before the Eagles took over with a 20-6 run.
Sierra Canyon, which defeated Etiwanda to win the section title last year, never got closer than 13 points the rest of the way. It is the fifth postseason matchup between the teams the last three years; Etiwanda has won three of them. And there is a good chance the teams will meet again in the CIF State Open Division regional playoffs.
The Eagles (29-3) held Sierra Canyon to 25% shooting for the game and the Trailblazers missed all 14 of their 3-point attempts.
“That was the worst basketball game of my Sierra Canyon career,” Trailblazers coach Alicia Komaki said. “The crazy thing is, we played so terribly, and the final score was 65-44. For as bad as we played, we should’ve lost by 60.”
Etiwanda junior Grace Knox led all scorers with 19 points and also pulled down 12 rebounds. Etiwanda won despite the fact that Knox and Richards (13 points) both picked up their