HACIENDA HEIGHTS — It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t sharp.
Yet the Los Altos girls basketball team found a way to advance past Yorba Linda in spite of 23 turnovers during the second round of the CIF Southern Section Division 2A playoffs on Wednesday.
The Conquerors needed overtime to do it, but they squeaked by the Mustangs, 65-61, and advanced to the quarterfinals.
They will be on the road Saturday against Corona Santiago, a 62-41 winner over Keppel on Wednesday.
“At the end of the day in playoffs, it’s about winning and moving on,” Los Altos head coach Mark Nakamura said. “It doesn’t matter how ugly or pretty, the scoreboard has to read your way.”
The Conquerors trailed in regulation 56-54 with 22 seconds remaining and the Mustangs heading to the free-throw line for one attempt. The Mustangs missed their free throw.
The Conquerors snagged the long rebound and dribbled up the court before calling a timeout with 15 seconds remaining. On the ensuing in-bounds play, the Conquerors found senior guard Vhenus Gaoa at the top of the key. Gaoa stutter-stepped, drove past her defender, rose up and was fouled on her attempt.
Despite a less than stellar shooting night by Gaoa (4 of 12), the senior point guard calmly sank two clutch free throws to tie the game at 56 and send it to overtime.
In overtime, the Conquerors raced to a lead and Gaoa hit 7 of 8 free-throw attempts to propel the Conquerors into the next round.
“(Gaoa) hit 14 free throws in a row in the second game of the year to seal that game. This is nothing new from her,” Nakamura said. “I know she didn’t play well or feel well (before the game), but at the end of the day, she figured it out.”
For much of the first half, the Conquerors pushed the ball up the court at every opportunity, even to its own detriment — 14 first-half turnovers. Eight of the 14 came in the first quarter where an equally careless Mustangs team, which had seven first-quarter turnovers, could not string together fluid offensive possessions.
A 6-2 run by the Conquerors to end the first quarter gave Los Altos a 15-9 lead heading into the second quarter. The start of the second quarter saw the Conquerors equally as careless, but this time the Mustangs were able to capitalize with a 10-4 run that tied the contest at 20-20.
Yorba Linda junior forward Darby Nicholson scored six of her eight points in the second quarter and helped fuel the Mustangs’ success in the second quarter. Yet the Conquerors responded with arguably their best basketball of the night when they finished the second half on a 7-2 run, thanks to freshman guard Aneya Neilly.
Neilly found herself on the end of three Gaoa assists in the second quarter and poured in 12 of her team-high 18 points in the final three minutes of the first half. Neilly’s hot second quarter gave the Conquerors a 36-29 lead at halftime.
A slew of turnovers to start the second half coupled with 35% shooting for the Conquerors saw the Mustangs build a six-point lead, 45-39, on the back of a 16-3 run. Villanueva also helped spark the Mustangs’ superb third quarter as she scored seven of her game-high 20 points in the third quarter.
“You have to credit Yorba Linda,” Nakamura said of his team’s 20 plus turnovers. “Some of our decision-making tonight was just bad. We gotta fix that before Saturday’s game.”
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Yet as good as the Mustangs played, they too, began to turn the ball over, seven in the third quarter, and saw themselves tied, 47-47.
The fourth quarter saw shooting woes by both teams before Gaoa hit 9 of 10 free throws to seal the win in overtime.