NOVATO, Calif. - After having a first-round bye, two-seed San Marin easily dispatched Analy on Friday night in the North Coast Section Division III quarterfinals, downing the seventh-seeded Tigers 56-36.
Despite the aggressive style of the Tigers, San Marin utilized smooth ball movement on offense by driving and kicking the ball back out to the perimeter for open threes. Not only were their three's falling, they did a lot of hard work finding inside shots and being aggressive while boxing out for rebounds. The Mustang game was run by sophomore small forward, Ariel Anderson. She filled up the stat sheet with 17 points, five rebounds and four steals. A lot of her points were earned by driving and hustling for fast break layups. A number of those fast break layups were created from a few pinpoint full court passes thrown by senior post and dual-sport standout Alexis Bishop.
And it wasn’t just Anderson who led to the victory, as freshman guard Keeley Wright did the most on both ends of the court with eight points, five assists and four steals. Her on-ball defense shut down the Tiger guards and her court vision led to many assists and precision passes. She had the most assists out of the whole Mustang squad.
“The main contributor to our win was probably our aggressive shooting from not only the inside, but from outside of the arch. We also spread the ball around so it wasn’t just one person doing all of it, it was the whole team,” Wright said. “It helped that a lot of our shots were falling too.”
Although they lost, Analy played a well fought game led by sophomore Lucca Lowenberg. She played hard in the first quarter and about half of the second with eight points until suffering from a knee injury in the second quarter. She ended up sitting out the rest of the game. Her absence was noticeable for the Tigers, who trailed by just three points after the first quarter, but saw San Marin take control with a 20-5 advantage in the second quarter to head into halftime with a 34-16 lead.
After an aggressive first half with both teams going into the double bonus, freshman small forward Maycee Hunter crashed the boards and took over the Analy offense with seven points and seven rebounds. The Tigers, however, weren’t able to catch up and the Mustangs sent them home making this the final game of Analy’s season.
The Mustangs (20-9) will now be facing three-seed Campolindo (17-10) next Tuesday at San Marin for the Division III semifinals, with an automatic berth in the CIF NorCal bracket and advancement to the section title game at stake. Campolindo defeated Eureka, 62-51, on Friday night.
