Gilroy
– For the Gilroy girls’ basketball team, playing the team that
beat them in last year’s CCS championship in this year’s final
regular season match had just the right sense of symmetry.
Gilroy – For the Gilroy girls’ basketball team, playing the team that beat them in last year’s CCS championship in this year’s final regular season match had just the right sense of symmetry.
Beating Salinas 71-67 in a game that went down to the wire Thursday night was the upshot, and what an upshot it was.
“It was really great to beat Salinas,” said senior Kendall Costa, who finished the game with 14 points. “It was good revenge for losing to them in the championship last year.”
Even a 41-point explosion from Salinas forward Angela Fales wasn’t enough to stem the Mustang tide. But Fales and her teammates certainly made it very interesting, and almost from the outset the game seemed destined for a dramatic finish.
When the third quarter came to an end, the ‘Stangs were cruising with a 10-point lead.
But the Cowboys would not go down without a fight.
Salinas slowly whittled away at the lead and with less than a minute to play, had managed to cut it to one, at 68-67.
That was the last time the Salinas girls scored.
With the game on the line, Gilroy came up with solid defense and added another three points to their total for the cushion they desperately needed.
“When we needed it the most, we took care of business,” said head coach Keri Williams. “When the score is 71-67, it is good, exciting basketball.”
When the game started, the Cowboys looked unstoppable, especially Fales, who scored 15 points in the first quarter alone.
But the Mustangs recovered from the initial attack, started cleaning the glass and rallied to take a 20-15 lead after the first quarter.
The second quarter saw the same hard fought battles and Gilroy nearly gave up its lead thanks to some costly turnovers.
The Mustangs’ rebounding saved the day.
“When they started to catch up, we were not rebounding well,” Williams said. “But when we started to rebound and box Salinas out we would increase our lead 10 or 12 points.”
In the third quarter, the ‘Stangs went on a roll, outscoring the Cowboys 15-5 through the first four minutes.
Salinas, however, kept pace and went on a 11-2 run of its own.
Gilroy regrouped to take a 10-point lead to start the fourth. Salinas chipped away, but in the end, it was all Mustangs.
Senior center Amanda Link led Gilroy with 19 points. Link was crucial inside in the final minute, scoring her team’s last three points and coming down with a huge rebound that all but assured Gilroy the victory.
“We just realized it was crunch time and coach was telling us to step it up,” Link said of the Gilroy effort at the end of the game. “We worked a lot on boxing out earlier in the week. Rebounding can make or break you in a game.”
Beating Salinas may have been sweet revenge, but more importantly it should have important repercussions on the CCS playoff seeding process which takes place Sunday.
Williams is optimistic about the team’s chances in the playoffs, which kick off Tuesday.
“I hope we can get a high seed, and even a home game and go as high as we can go,” she said.
