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Sports

GIRLS BASKETBALL: Santa Cruz Runs Out of Steam Against Soquel

Knights advance to Saturday's SCCAL tournament final.

Soquel 68, Santa Cruz 61

The Star: Santa Cruz High senior Kali DeHart matched Soquel High star Ragine Graves point-for-point on Thursday night. Both players finished the game with 20 points, but it was Graves and the Knights that walked away with the victory. DeHart, junior guards Pauli Pappas and Ashley Claussen all scored in double figures for the Cardinals. Pappas and Claussen each ended up with 13 points.  

The Turning Point: Soquel used its superior size to get things going early on in the game, but the pesky Santa Cruz bunch wouldn’t go away. The Cardinals erased a 11-point halftime deficit with some inspired play in the third quarter. With Soquel only up by one going into the fourth quarter, back-to-back hard-nosed drives to the hoop by Ragine Graves and Madison Rocha—who scored a tough bucket and was fouled--ignited the Knights faithful in attendance and put Soquel ahead by seven points late in the fourth quarter. The five-point swing made the score 60-53 with 3:04 remaining in the contest.

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The Quote: "I felt like I hadn’t done much in the first half." —Soquel guard Ragine Graves said about her slow start on Thursday night. “My mindset changed. I started thinking I need to get more aggressive. I was not going to lose this game. We all wanted to be playing on Saturday.”

Graves scored 16 of her 20 points in the second half Thursday night.

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 What's Next? Santa Cruz will await the playoff brackets and begin Central Coast Section playoff action next week.

Soquel will square off against the Cinderella of the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League tournament, St. Francis High-Watsonville. The girls basketball title game will tip-off at 3 pm on Saturday. The game will be played at Aptos High.

 Bottom Line: It was a hard fought victory—the third over Santa Cruz this season for Soquel—to put the No. 2 seed into Saturday’s tournament finale. Sophomore guard Madision Rocha scored 15 points, while Graves added 20 of her own. The duo attacked the rim at will in the second half, putting lots of pressure on the undersized Santa Cruz front line. Undefeated No. 1 seed Scotts Valley fell to St. Francis in the nightcap, pushing Soquel into the role of favorite going into championship Saturday.

........................................................................................................................ 

 Santa Cruz Scoring

Pappas-13

Claussen-13

DeHart-20

Whalen-7

Oropeza-4

Conroe-1

Myall-5

 

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