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SAN DIEGO — Kobe Bryant’s “Mamba mentality” burns deep within Sage Hill’s girls basketball team, and that flame surfaced again Tuesday against San Diego powerhouse Mission Hills.

The Lightning chased a deep squad with two players bound for the Big West Conference most of the night, fighting off a few potential knockout blows before Mission Hills secured a 68-53 victory in the SoCal Holiday Prep Classic at Canyon Hills High.

UC Santa Barbara-bound Jessica Grant scored a game-high 24 points, including six 3-pointers, to help Mission Hills improve to 2-0 in the Premier Division.

Sage Hill point guard Isabel Gomez scored 14 of her 21 points in the first half and finished with five 3-pointers.

Both teams played a physical style for four quarters but the final seconds were among the most intense. With the Lightning fouling to stop the clock, Sage Hill coach Kerwin Walters alleged that a Mission Hills player spoke to him disrespectfully during a stoppage in play in the final seconds.

Walters and one of his assistant coaches became visibly upset and the teams didn’t shake hands afterward.

“As a player, you don’t … talk to any coach like that,” Walters said. “I don’t talk to them. They don’t talk to me. I’m not going to say what they said. It is what is.”

“My coaches heard it, too. They all heard it. My players, all my coaches,” he added.

Mission Hills coach Chris Kroesch said he spoke afterward with his player about the incident. He said the player told him that she wasn’t talking to Walters but instead speaking with teammates.

Kroesch said his team apologizes for upsetting Walters but that he believed his player.

Sage Hill (11-4) features four players who were part of the highly competitive Mambas travel team that Bryant was en route to coach when he died with eight others in a helicopter crash in January 2020. Inspired by Bryant, the players stuck together at Sage Hill and helped the school capture a CIF-SS title in the spring.

The Lightning trailed by as many as 11 points in the first half but had a chance to trim the deficit to three late in the second quarter but missed a foul shot with 21 seconds left.

Still, Sage Hill was close at half, trailing 28-22 to a Mission Hills squad that placed fifth at the La Jolla Country Day tournament and nearly beat La Jolla Country Day, another San Diego power.

Mission Hills (5-3) led by 16 points early in the fourth before Sage Hill trimmed the deficit to nine with 3:15 left and began to foul.

The Grizzlies made 11 of 13 foul shots in the fourth to help seal the victory. “They showed a lot of heart,” Kroesch said. “I thought we were sloppy.”

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