MORAGA, Calif. — It was a tale of two halves but the first one by the
Miramonte (Orinda) girls basketball team was just too good to overcome.
The nation's No. 8 team, according to the
MaxPreps computer rankings, built a 20-point halftime edge against an overly "amped"
Bishop O'Dowd (Oakland) squad before holding on for a wildly entertaining 70-66 North Coast Section Division III championship game at St. Mary's College.
Sabrina Ionescu, one of the nation's top junior, was as good as advertised with 28 points for the top seeded Matadors (28-2), but it was the play of freshman
Clair Steele that proved pivotal.
Steele, a 5-4 reserve guard, drilled three three-pointers in the second half and swished four free throws down the stretch to finish with 20 points to hold off the hard-charging Dragons (21-9), who never led but closed to 58-57 with 4:20 left thanks largely to a mammoth 29-point effort from first-year varsity player
Aerial Chavarin.
But Steele made sure that was as close as the Dragons would get, drilling a three-pointer from the right flank on Miramonte's next possession.
"She's fearless," Miramonte coach Kelly Sopak said. "Sometimes in games as intense as this it's not always the best player who emerges it's the one who is willing to risk it the most and lay it on the line. That's what Clair did."
O'Dowd was just too emotional the first half, according to coach Malik McCord, because last year it likely would have faced Miramonte in last year's title game. The Dragons were disqualified by the NCS for playing one too many games.
"We definitely wanted to win for our seniors," McCord said. "We talked all week about not being too amped, but I guess it was unavoidable."
Miramonte, meanwhile, came out on fire racing to leads of 23-6, 38-16 and 44-24 at halftime.
Rachelle Louie scored eight of her 10 points in the first and
Keana Delos Santos hit two three-pointers. But in the second half, the Dragons turned up the heat defensively, won the battle of the boards and started on a 10-0 run.
Behind the play of Chavarin,
Salihah Bey (13 points) and three-year starting guards
Aisia Robertson and
Asha Thomas, they cut the lead to one. Chavarin, a 5-10 post, is a USA team soccer player who before this season hadn't played basketball since the eighth grade.
She made 12-of-16 shots and had 12 rebounds, and had 10 of O'Dowd's 23 points in the fourth quarter.
"She's a winner," McCord said of Chavarin. "I love that kid. She kept us in, but we just couldn't get over the hump."
Said Sopak: "Our first half as good as we've played all year. It took something out of us. We needed more time to rest at halftime. We couldn't score. Clair stopped the bleeding and then we had just enough to hold on."
It was Miramonte's second straight and seventh NCS title while the Dragons missed out on a possible 10th crown.
