Entering the second half of play tied 24-24, the women’s basketball team had its eyes on the ball.
But when the clock struck 8, the pixie dust wore off and the Cinderella story ended without the happy ending, as EC reverted back to its non-conference ways, losing to Cerritos in their final game of the season, 58-42.
“We did a pretty good job, but in the second half we couldn’t close it out,” Nohriko Nakano, guard, said. “That’s why we lost.”
Looking to possibly make the playoffs for the second year in a row and extend sophomores Nakano, Nicole Norris, Venus Moreno and Terra Dixon’s season, the Warriors played a close game against the Falcons before their shooting went south and the Falcons’ offense soared with 7:53 left in the game.
“Once they got running, it was hard trying to get back into it,” freshman guard Staci Kaneshiro said. “We tried. We gave it all we had. We tried.”
Following a 6-11 start due in a large part to a big freshman group and an inability to score, the Warriors got hot late going 5-1 in conference, and found themselves in a position to tie Cerritos as conference champions.
The tie would have forced South Coast Conference coaches into deciding which of the two schools should advance.
Steve Shaw said the hot streak was due in large part to good fundamentals.
“We learned how to win basketball games,” he said. “Even during our first eight games, it was basically a basket here and a basket there. There wasn’t anything gigantic we needed to learn. All we needed to do was learn how to do the little things a little bit better.”
The Warriors weren’t able to put the parts together in the second half. Led by Kaneshiro (14 points, 3 steals), EC exchanged leads with the Falcons throughout the first half.
“I think I played defense well,” she said. “But after I got my fourth foul, I couldn’t play defense as hard as I would have liked.”
But plagued with four fouls in the second half, Kaneshiro was forced to play tentatively. The Warriors also struggled grabbing defensive rebounds and gave up several costly turnovers at the end of the game.
With 7:53 left in the game, Cerritos led by four. Falcon forward Niki Simms followed with a steal, getting an easy lay- up on the break.
By 7:04, the Falcons led by eight. South Coast Conference leading scorer Mallory Ellis (9 points, 7 rebounds), who had scored 32 against L.A. Southwest two days earlier, would later follow with a three, cutting the lead to six, but Cerritos followed that up with two three’s of its own and never looked back.
Shaw believes that the team will be better next year following a year of experience.
“It’s huge,” Shaw said. “It’s a gigantic difference. There is something very valuable (about experience).
“We have a good nucleus of players coming back and by adding a couple of players from local high schools, we should be good next year.”
