GHS girls hoops team tops Live Oak, 59-37, to end regular season
on two-game winning streak in league
MORGAN HILL – The Lady Mustang hoopsters could have very well finished up their season with Thursday’s commanding 59-37 road victory over rival Live Oak, but the team hopes that is not the case.
Despite finishing on a two-game winning streak in T-CAL, including Tuesday’s 70-point performance against North Salinas, Gilroy holds an 11-15 overall record and 3-7 league mark, both short of automatically making the CCS Playoffs with a .500 record in either. But Coach Kari Williams plans on petitioning CCS for a Division I playoff spot.
“Hopefully, we’ve showed them that we can play basketball and that we’re a young team and the longer the season goes, the better we’re going to get,” said Williams, who will make a case for her team on Sunday at 1 p.m. “If we get into that, we’re looking to just get better and better because we’re playing our best basketball right now.”
Gilroy, which struggled to find its groove until late in the season, is also expected the get back senior guard Sarah Miller, who was out with a knee injury since the first game of the season, for the post-season.
“We’ve matured a lot from the beginning of the season. We’re healthy. I’m going to have all 12 players on the roster if we go on,” Williams said. “Miller got her clearance today to play for next week. Things seem to be going our way so we’re looking forward to the chance to go on and play for CCS.”
Junior guard Kendall Costa led the charge last night with 12 of her team-high 14 points coming in the second half, while sophomore point guard Kristen Campos tallied 13 points and senior center Sarah Hoeft added 10 points.
“Costa was great. Actually, Costa played a pretty good first half as well, but definitely in the second half she stepped it up,” Williams said. “She came out, hit a couple of jumpers that we needed, started picking up a couple of points off rebounds, which was good.”
The Lady Mustangs used an 11-0 run in the first quarter to take a 16-9 lead and they never looked back, although the host Lady Acorns made some runs of their own to tighten the gap.
“You had to know Live Oak was going to come out and play hard because they’ve had a tough season. We’ve had just a little better season than them,” Williams said. “We came out a little flat. We were still definitely in command of the game the whole way, but definitely had to get fired up for the second half to get it going.”
Gilroy led 24-18 at the half, and then came out on fire in the third quarter, extending to a 14-point lead. In the fourth quarter, the Lady Mustangs continued to stretch the spread, outscoring Live Oak, 20-12.
“Sarah Hoeft, they had to triple-team her tonight and she still played great. She still scored and passed the ball,” Williams said. “I thought KC (Kristen Campos) dished the ball excellent. Mo (Marissa Nowakowski) and KC stole the ball a lot. We played really great defense.”
Both the junior varsity and freshman teams also finished up with victories over Live Oak.
