Holiday Showcase Arroyo Grande victory leaves Tehachapi at 13-1
Six girls basketball teams had the chance to make their holidays just a little happier in Arvin Friday. Two Kern County squads seized the opportunity.
In the penultimate match of the night, Golden Valley held off a gritty Shafter squad to claim the Gold Bracket title at the Arvin Holiday Showcase, joining Silver champions Taft as local tournament winners.
However, Tehachapi, which entered unbeaten and ranked among the top Central Section teams after impressive wins over Bakersfield and Bakersfield Christian, was unable to follow suit in the Platinum title game, falling 44-31 to a hot-shooting Arroyo Grande squad.
So the full list of winners from Friday’s action included Lone Pine (Bronze), Strathmore (Ruby), Farmersville (Opal), Taft (Silver), Golden Valley (Gold) and Arroyo Grande (Platinum).
ARROYO GRANDE 44, TEHACHAPI 31
An early outside-shooting barrage from the Eagles left the Warriors reeling, and Tehachapi was never able to recover, sustaining its first loss of the 2022-23 campaign and falling to 13-1.
Arroyo Grande connected on seven 3-pointers, including two each from Jhade La Paz, Molly Sloan and Brooklyn Waldram, taking a 15-point lead by halftime and cruising to a 44-31 victory.
The 6-foot-2 freshman center Diana Sorrondo led the Eagles in scoring, with Sloan and Waldram close behind. Sorrondo did most of her damage in the fourth quarter.
Tehachapi only had nine total points in the first half, but Riley Walden managed to score nine on her own by the end of the night, as the Warriors gradually improved down the stretch.
Michelle Orellana was the only
player on the scoresheet in the first quarter for Tehachapi. Her efforts were dramatically exceeded by a slew of Arroyo Grande corner 3-pointers, set up by skillful penetration from the Eagles’ guards, that put them up 14-5 in short order.
Arroyo Grande’s outside shooting cooled down, but it found plenty of success in the post too, using Sorrondo’s first points to take a 22-7 lead in the second quarter.
Tehachapi twice cut its deficit to 12 points in the third quarter, using a Walden 3-pointer and a string of Laura LaMonte free throws, and then found itself down just 37-26 late in the fourth
quarter following a 6-0 run. But the Eagles held firm enough on defense, and time ran out on anything resembling a comeback.
GOLDEN VALLEY 37, SHAFTER 32
Asked to pinpoint when his Bulldogs squad rose from their early offensive slump, Golden Valley coach Curt Wilson didn’t hesitate for even a moment — Ty’Jai Jones’ 3-pointer was the obvious answer.
The senior guard came off the bench, collected a clean backward pass in transition and sank a shot from deep to put the Bulldogs up 12-10, after they had ended the first quarter trailing Shafter.
“(We) kind of loosened up, and then the next 3 came from another bench player, Jaylene Esparza,” Wilson said. “And when you have your bench players coming in and they’re contributing, even when they have a limited amount of minutes, it allows the starters that opportunity to know, we as a group are playing, not those two or three key players.
“So I think without those two making those critical 3’s at that moment, I don’t know if we would have got going.”
Golden Valley carried its momentum through the halftime break following Esparza’s critical connection, transforming the pace of the game with a 17-4 run, then turning up the defensive intensity in the fourth quarter for a 37-32 win.
The Bulldogs improved to 10-3 on the year, surviving another close game against Shafter after previously slipping past the Generals at their Play With Honor tournament earlier in December.
This time, they had to contend with 13 points from Ariana Vega and nine more from freshman Kyla Schooley, including seven in the fourth quarter to sustain Shafter’s chances for just a bit longer.
Shifty point guard Isabel Acevez led Golden Valley with 10 points, and Shiona Nash added eight, including a three-point play in the third quarter that capped off the Bulldogs’ long run.
Shafter excelled at getting to the line and used eight early free throws to take a 16-12 lead before Esparza’s wide-open 3-pointer and a post layup by Nash gave Golden Valley the advantage. The Generals had three shots in transition right before the halftime buzzer but went into the break down 17-16.
Forward Zharrea Johnson made a jumper and a bank shot to help boost the Bulldogs’ lead to six points in the third quarter. The Generals couldn’t cut into that margin until Schooley reduced it to four three separate times in the fourth — on an early jumper, a transition layup with one minute left and a pull-up three with six seconds remaining — but at no point was her team able to capitalize.
Wilson praised his team’s defensive execution in the final quarter.
“When they’re communicating with each other ... our defense improves,” Wilson said. “And sometimes the coaches want to act like it’s them who’s doing it, but really it’s those girls on the court.”