SANTA CRUZ, CA — Nikiya Bechtle was all smiles and full of jubilation Saturday night.
The Scotts Valley High senior basketball player, who has been on varsity since her freshman year, went the last three years of her career without suffering a single loss to a Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League opponent.
Scotts Valley led from start to finish as the top-seeded Falcons defeated No. 2 seed Soquel 77-49 Saturday night in the SCCAL Tournament Championship game at Kaiser Permanente Arena.
Bechtle scored a game-high 21 points, while grabbing eight rebounds and dishing eight assists.
“It feels really good especially with the hard work we put in,” Bechtle said. “All three years - especially this year with our conditioning - we worked really hard to play both offensively and defensively well both ways.”
Fellow senior Grace Giguiere scored 20 points, grabbed nine rebounds, had four assists and three blocks while junior Sam Boyle also scored 20 points with nine rebounds with five steals for the Falcons.
Scotts Valley (22-4) led 24-8 after one and never allowed Soquel to get within 12 the rest of the game.
“They came out on fire in the first quarter they were shooting really well,” Scotts Valley coach Rick Silver said of his team. “The defense was stifling as usual we pride ourselves on defense an if the shots are falling this is what you end up with.”
The Falcons went into halftime leading the Knights 44-27.
Junior Michaela Thornton led Soquel with 19 points, six rebounds, three assists and four steals. Freshman McKenzie Duran added a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds along with five assists and fellow freshman Nevaeh Guido chipped in with nine points.
A year after losing co-SCCAL Most Valuable Players in Mandy Silver and Charlie Boyle, Scotts Valley continued its dominance over the SCCAL by winning every game by at least 13 points.
Including its two SCCAL postseason games, Scotts Valley’s average margin of victory over SCCAL opponents was 33.7 points per game.
“It’s so great I know our past teammates are really cheering us on and are proud of us and our coaches love it,” Sam Boyle said. “It’s really rare you find a team that’s like this to have such a run so we are really appreciating it and working really hard.”
Scotts Valley has won 47 straight games against SCCAL foes dating back to 2013.
The last loss came back on January 28, 2013, 61-59 against St. Francis Central Coast Catholic.
Since then, Becthle the lone player left from that team, never came close to falling to an SCCAL foe.
“It says we work really hard and even if we win a lot of games we still don’t get ahead of ourselves,” Bechtle said. “We go in with a positive attitude that we are going to but we don’t get ahead of ourselves we just play every game hard until the very end.”
Scotts Valley’s dominace has overshadowed the fact that the Falcons aren’t just beating cupcakes.
St. Francis CCC is the reigning three-time Central Coast Section Division V champion and Soquel is a perennial playoff team.
Soquel (16-9) will likely be seeded in the middle of the pack in D-IV this year while the Sharks will again be eyeing another D-V title.
“It’s really a testament to how hard these girls have worked to get back here,” Silver said. “When you lose the kind of players we lost last year to graduation to come back and maintain the same level of dominance, it’s a testament to these girls and how hard they worked I couldn’t be prouder of them.”
Now the Falcons will see if they will be making a third straight appearance in the CCS Open Division or get put in D-IV where they will be among the favorites to win a CCS title.
Wherever Scotts Valley get put they will be game for whoever they get matched up against.
“Either way if we go Division IV we are excited we want to look to win a title or if we got to Open Division we’re going to play as hard as we can,” Bechtle said. “Then we’ll be onto the state tournament.”
Scotts Valley has made it to the California Interscholastic Federation NorCal D-IV semifinals the past two seasons.
