The No. 13 San Diego Mesa Olympians women’s basketball team took a big lead early and kept pace with the No. 20 Cuesta Cougars, a school from San Luis Obispo, Calif., in their 63-45 win to begin the playoffs.
“Really proud of the way that we played. We were locked in both offensively and defensively and this was a total group effort. Everybody did something to help us win today, so I’m really proud of everybody,” head coach Lindsay Samaniego said.
San Diego Mesa was fresh off a pair of conference losses to end the regular season against Palomar and Irvine Valley, which dropped them to the 13-seed in the SoCal regional bracket.
“There was a little bit [of disappointment] because we know we could do better. We’re a pretty good team. So I think that’s what motivated us to come out today locked in and get this done,” sophomore post player Alethze “AJ” Marquez said.
The Olympians scored just 10 points in the first quarter after they went 1-for-9 on 3-point attempts but made 4 of 8 in the second quarter which allowed them to pull ahead 30-18 at the half.
“I think that we just did a good job of moving the ball around and it was only a matter of time until some of those fell. So as long as we’re taking the right shot, we’re good with the result” head coach Lindsay Samaniego said.
The Olympians went 7-for-27 on 3’s in total. They were a 25 percent shooting team from beyond the arc during the regular season.
On the other hand, Cuesta made just two 3’s in 19 attempts. Their 30 percent overall shooting was 10 points less than their season average.
“I think we prepared. We were coming to practice everyday, we were scouting them. I just honestly think we were locked in and we came prepared to do what we needed to do defensively and offensively,” Marquez said.
The crowd of players’ families, friends and Mesa College students and alumni cheered from the start of the game until the end. A rough estimate of the size of the crowd was 200-300 people at the gymnasium.
“When I was out on the bench, you could definitely feel the crowd, just everybody there cheering for everybody,” Marquez said.
Marquez scored 10 points with 13 rebounds, four assists and four steals.
Sophomore guard Christina Bowen led the team with 15 points and four assists in 35 minutes played. She went 7-for-10 from the free-throw line.
Towards the end of the game, Cuesta pressured harder to make something happen and it worked for a few minutes. Mesa’s 20-point lead dwindled down to just 10 before the Olympians made a free throw and a 3-pointer was made with five minutes left to regain a 14-point lead.
“They got us a little bit in their press late in the second half and, you know, we just got to take care of the ball and, again, make the right reads, make the right decisions and once we kind of calmed ourselves down, we changed our press break,” Samaniego said.
After a timeout was called during the Cuesta press, they successfully countered the press and made back-to-back layups.
“Use your ball fakes, you got to use your dribbles and meet the pass, and we kind of switched up our press breaks, so it allowed us to pass the ball into our posts, which gave us an opportunity to move the ball around a little bit easier,” Samaniego said.
San Diego Mesa needs two more wins to advance to the State championship. Their next opponent will be No. 4 Glendale on Saturday, March 1 in Glendale, Calif., just 10 miles north of Los Angeles.
“We want to still keep playing. I mean, it’s March Madness. Anything can happen in March,” Marquez said.
