Carpinteria knocked down five three-pointers in the second quarter to build an 11-point lead and held off a late surge by Bishop Diego for a 46-38 non-league girls basketball win on Tuesday night at Carpinteria.
Senior guards Tori Kelley and Monique Sanchez each buried a pair of three-pointers and Juliet Parsons had the other trey as the Warriors broke open a 12-12 tie in the second quarter and took a 27-16 lead into halftime.
“We finally started to move in our second quarter,” Carpinteria coach Amy Bryant said. “I kept telling the girls I felt like we were going in slow motion all game. We seemed very slow and that might be because they’re still on Christmas break and in that vacation mindset. I kept telling them, ‘We need to speed it up, we need to move the ball around, we need to play our game.
“I feel like in that second and third quarter they picked up the pace a little bit and Monique and Tori hit a couple of good threes. They really helped us out.”
Sanchez scored 16 points and Kelley had 15 to lead Carpinteria (6-4).
Bishop coach Jeff Burich pointed to the three pointers as a difference maker in the first half.
“They made six threes in the first half,” he said. “I told (my players), ‘They’re not going to make six in the second half, so make sure we tighten things up on defense and try and do the best we can on offense.”
Both teams struggled to score in the third quarter, but when Bishop’s Kylie Koeper hit a three-pointer to make the score 31-21, it was a sign of what was to come in the final quarter.
Koeper took over the game for the Cardinals, scoring 10 straight points, including a pair of three-pointers, cutting Carpinteria’s lead to four points, 37-33 with 2:20 to go.
Koeper finished with 15 points, while Andrea Castellanos and Natalie Whiting each scored nine points for Bishop (3-5), which was playing its first game since Dec. 10.
“She’s got to be the go-to person,” Burich said of Koeper. “When they switched and put the bigger person on her, we just let her shoot away from the 3-point line. When they had a smaller person on her, we tried to post her up inside. But when she got the ball inside there were still two or three people guarding her, so it was tough for her.”
Carpinteria coach Amy Bryant felt her team got a little tense when Bishop started to make its comeback.
“We tend to panic a little bit when the game is on the line,” she said. “I think (our players) got a little rattled when No. 22 (Koeper) made a couple of threes in a row. I think it got in their head that all of sudden the game was on the line, whereas the game is on the line all four quarters. We just tend to panic a little bit when it happens in the fourth quarter.”
Carpinteria regrouped and got a clutch jump shot by Sanchez on an out-of-bounds play to go up by six. Bishop answered on a drive by Whiting, making it 39-35.
Parsons then came up with a huge three-pointer for the Warriors with 53 seconds left. After Bishop made one of two free throws, Kayana Diaz took a long pass and scored a layup, boosting Carpinteria’s lead to 44-36.
The Cardinals got a basket from Castellanos but lost Koeper, who fouled out with 14 seconds remaining. Carpinteria’s made her two free throws for the final score.
— Noozhawk sports editor Barry Punzal can be reached at bpunzal@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk Sports on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.