Monarchs run past St. Joseph Notre Dame in NorCals and Torreys turn back Windward in the SoCals
They say “the third time’s a charm,” and sometimes it is, or we would have the cliché, but sometime it is not, and that was the case in the NorCal girls Open championship
While second-seeded St. Joseph Notre Dame-Alameda stayed close for the better part of three quarters, they just could not match the package and problems on offense and defense that top-seeded Archbishop Mitty (26-3) brings to the gym as the Monarchs showed why they are far and away the top team in Northern California after a 69-53 CIF Northern Regional Open Division title-game victory on Tuesday night at Miramonte High in Orinda.
While the championship game between Prep2Prep Central Coast Section No. 1 Mitty and P2P North Coast Section No. 1 St. Joseph Notre Dame was the lowest margin of victory for the Monarchs in the three games, it was still a sweep Coach Sue Phillips and her girls and showed just how much distance there is between the top team in Northern California and the No. 2 team and the rest of the field.
Senior guard Ashley Hiraki led three Mitty girls in double figure scoring with 18 points with six rebounds, five assists and four steals, junior Olivia Williams added 11 points and junior Hunter Hernandez, in her tenth game back after returning from a knee injury, had 10 points and was 6-of-6 from the free-throw line in only 14 minutes of action.
St. Joseph Notre Dame (24-8) led 8-2 and 13-7 in the first quarter and went into the second quarter with a 15-14 lead. Mitty took its first lead at 18-17 on a basket by Hiraki but from there the teams exchanged leads five times and it was tied once, but when junior Amelia Scharpf scored to make it 25-24, Mitty had the lead for good.
The Monarchs only led 31-28 at halftime but they scored the first six points of the second half and from there the closest the Pilots got was seven points on two occasions before Mitty drew away to win easily.
“It would be short-sighted to summarize to summarize the win or this season’s success due to depth,” Phillips remarked. “Yes, that’s a factor, but so was ability and skill, in-game adjustments and scouting report defensive execution.”
St. Joseph Notre Dame was led by junior Makena Mastora with 13 points (six rebounds, five steals), but 10 of the points came in the fourth quarter and the Pilots went into the final period down 54-38. Sophomore Talana Lepolo added 12 points but the Mitty defense took its toll as UC Riverside-bound Malia Mastora only managed four points, and for a team that moves the ball well the Pilots only had four assisted baskets and made 19 turnovers.
Even so, with what St. Joseph Notre Dame has been through, with naysayers all around them and their former coach Shawn Hipol feeling he needed to step aside, the girls still produced the greatest season in school history by winning the first-ever CIF North Coast Section Open Division championship with fans bringing blowup pictures of Hipol to the games and using a Twitter hashtag #teamhip as well.
Through it all the girls persevered and their new coach, interim head coach Brian Sato, who had been an assistant to Hipol for nine years, guided them like a wily veteran but in reality he had no previous he had no head coaching experience when he took the job on a 2-day notice
“I could not be more proud of the girls and the way they stuck to their values and principles despite all the unnecessary challenges that were thrown their way,” Sato said. “They fought with all their heart and soul and put their whole dreams in front of them and set forth on a mission. We all had hopes and dreams of a state championship and no one can take away coming up just short or as a letdown or failure.”
“After the game I could barely look at their faces when addressing the team one final time for fear of becoming overwhelmed with emotion myself. We overcame a lot and achieved more than most folks could ever imagine,” continued Sato, who coached the team’s final 19 games and finished with a 15-4 record with all the losses to nationally-ranked teams. “
The game was originally supposed to be played at Gunn High in Palo Alto but with Santa Clara County putting in large-even restrictions on Monday the game had to be moved and a the announcement of Miramonte did not come until 1:30 pm on Tuesday, only five and a half hours before tipoff.
Now Mitty moves on to the CIF Open Division state championship on Saturday night at the Golden 1 Center against state and national No. 1 La Jolla Country Day and its superstar and Oregon-bound Te-hina Paopao and 6-3 post Breya Cunningham, and she is either the No. 1 or No. 2 freshman in the state, and according to ESPN girls basketball guru Dan Olson “among the elite interior performers in the class of 2023” in the nation.
Southern Regional Open Division championship
La Jolla Country Day 59, Windward-Los Angeles 48
Before the Northern Regional game even started the Southern Regional Open Division title game was already decided and it was La Jolla Country Day coming on in the fourth quarter behind Oregon-bound superstar Te-hina Paopao and 6-3 freshman phenom Breya Cunningham.
In a performance that cemented her status as the top player in the state, Paopao went for a game-high 30 points with 14 coming in the fourth quarter after the Torreys only led 39-34 after three quarters. Cunningham finished with 16 points.
La Jolla Country Day (32-1) trailed 12-4 early and 16-9 at the end of the first quarter and they were having no success stopping the state’s other top freshman, 6-0 Juju Watkins, who had eight of her team-high 16 points in the first quarter.
The Torreys didn’t panic and when freshman Sumayah Sugapong nailed a three-pointer at the buzzer Country Day took a 24-22 halftime lead it never relinquished. Plus, Paopao was guarding Watkins and limited her to four second-half points after she had 12 of Windward’s 22 first-half points
The lead got to 35-24 but Windward (27-6) fought back to trim it to 39-34 after three quarters, but that’s when Paopao took over. After a free-throw by Watkins cut the deficit to three points, the 5-10 senior hit back-to-back three-pointers sandwiched around a three-point play by the Wildcats Ally Lopez, and Country Day was up 45-38, but Watkins got her fourth and final points of the second half and Maya Stokes hit a three-pointer and all of a sudden it was 45-44 midway through the fourth quarter.
From there it was all Paopao who led a 14-4 run to close out the game. She had eight points and found Cunningham twice inside for easy layups.
Now, Mitty Coach Sue Phillips will have to find a way to stop the state’s top outside-inside combo and it will be no easy task.
“The plan is top secret,” Phillips mused. “We hope to make things as challenging for not only those two but their entire team.”
For Country Day it will be their second trip to Northern California. Coach Terri Bamford and her girls were in Oakland in January and played in the MLK Showcase at Bishop O’Dowd where they beat Salesian-Richmond and St. Joseph Notre Dame, 71-51 and 71-43, respectively.
The CIF Open title game is scheduled for 6:00 pm on Saturday at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.
