LJCD BREEZES BY MISSION HILLS
To the surprise of absolutely no one, La Jolla Country Day is, once again, in a San Diego Section championship game.
What was a bit shocking was how easy the section’s top team made the run to another title game look.
To earn a third trip to the Open Division championship game in the last four seasons, host La Jolla Country Day’s defense throttled No. 5 Mission Hills into scoring just 14 field goals.
Add in 16 turnovers and you can see why top-seeded La Jolla Country Day powered through for a 73-47 victory Wednesday night.
La Jolla Country Day (27-3) will face No. 7 Del Norte on Saturday at Cathedral Catholic at 2 p.m. Del Norte defeated No. 3 Westview 6362 in the other semifinal
La Jolla Country Day 73, Mission Hills 47
game.
“This never gets old,” LJCD coach Teri Bamford said. “Stopping their scoring off the 3-point line was the key to beating them.
“I thought we did a great job on them there.”
At the same time, the Torreys collected 28 field goals on 55 field-goal tries, led by senior center Breya Cunningham’s 20 points to go with 10 rebounds.
Cunningham sat out a few minutes in the first half with foul trouble, but not even that could slow down the winners.
When she sat down, the team went on an 11-2 run to thwart any upset hopes the Grizzlies (20-10) had.
“I’m used to all the bumps and bruises inside,”
Cunningham said. “I’ve been doing this for 10 years or so, but this year has been tough to stay grounded.
“It’s hard to stay in the moment because we have high expectations after winning Open last year.
“We’re nationally ranked and we all want to make a state run.”
Mission Hills came into the semifinals averaging 64.8 points a game, but the LJCD defense took away the 3point shot and turned the Grizzlies into a driving team.
Cunningham was the stopper in the paint in that plan.
“We scouted them for a week and we’ve played them before so we know what they want to do,” she said. “We wanted to make them into a layup team.”
After a slow-shooting first quarter, the Torreys, who beat Mission Hills 73-53 on Feb. 4, went 8-for-16 in the second quarter, 8-for-12 in the third quarter and 8for-12 in the fourth quarter.
Eventually, the lead reached 28 points with a ninth straight win and a 9-5 edge over Mission Hills in the last decade.
Besides Cunningham, the Torreys got 14 points from senior Sumayah Sugapong and 13 points from Taj Roberts.
Sugapong’s 14 points gives her exactly 1,000 in her four-year career.
The Torreys won the section Open Division title in 2020 by beating Cathedral 54-37 in the finals and last year when they beat Mission Hills 68-53.
Mission Hills was led by junior Kyara Walker’s 19 points and Mariah Brown’s 12 points.