Behind a game-high eight points off the bench from Jackie
Echaorre and a suffocating defense that forced 22 turnovers, as
well as held No. 4 Santa Teresa scoreless in the third quarter, the
No. 5 San Benito Lady Balers moved one step closer to the Division
I championship on Saturday night when they topped the Saints 36-22
at Mission College in Santa Clara.
SANTA CLARA
Scouting the San Benito Lady Balers during their second-round matchup against Silver Creek last Thursday, Santa Teresa head coach Sean Peterson couldn’t help but notice the scoring ability of Victoria Aguilera and Erin Glasspool.
After the two combined to drop 33 points against Silver Creek, the attention paid by the Saints to San Benito’s two leading scorers was both expected and obvious during Saturday’s Division I quarterfinal.
“We just wanted to try to take them away a little bit,” Peterson said, “and we knew they were going to be aggressive.”
Holding the duo to a combined 12 points on Saturday may have been a small victory for the Saints. But perhaps lost in the mix, lost on the bench, was San Benito’s Jackie Echaorre.
Behind a game-high eight points off the bench from Echaorre, as well as a suffocating San Benito defense that forced 22 turnovers and held No. 4 Santa Teresa scoreless in the third quarter, the No. 5 Lady Balers moved one step closer to the Central Coast Section championship on Saturday night when they topped the Saints 36-22 at Mission College in Santa Clara.
Although unlike the offensive clinic they put on against Silver Creek, in which San Benito shot 42 percent from the field in a 65-40 victory over the Raiders, the Lady Balers played lockdown defense on Saturday night instead, and found an offensive spark off the bench from both Echaorre and freshman Ellie Burley, who deposited six points in the victory.
“When me and Erin (Glasspool) couldn’t finish, they finished,” said Aguilera, who had six points Saturday. “Jackie, Ellie Burley — they put our points in.
“It’s good to know that when we don’t do good, the rest of the team can.”
And it may just take a full team effort on Wednesday, too, as the Lady Balers advance to play top-seeded North Salinas (22-3) in the semifinals, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. at Mission College. North High defeated No. 8 Mount Pleasant (19-6) 69-34 on Saturday to advance to the semifinal round.
“We need to step up,” Glasspool said. “We need to finish.”
San Benito lost its previous two contests to the Vikings — a 42-28 loss on Jan. 11 in Salinas and a 47-40 defeat on Feb. 4 in Hollister. But the Lady Balers have won five of their six games since that early-February loss, and advanced past the higher-seeded Saints (19-6) on Saturday night for a chance at redemption.
“We feel confident with the way we played at home (on Feb. 4), we just didn’t finish,” San Benito head coach David Kaplansky said. “We need to clean up those last two to three minutes of the game and give ourselves a chance to win.”
Santa Teresa created problems during the waning minutes of Saturday’s game, when San Benito may have simply run out of gas against the speedy Saints, although the outcome was never in question.
After a slow start in the first quarter for both teams — San Benito and Santa Teresa were tied at 2-all nearly six minutes into the game — the Lady Balers closed out the opening period on a 7-2 run behind a put-back jumper from Nicole Rianda and a wide-open 3-pointer from Echaorre, who had several clear looks at the hoop on Saturday.
“They were paying attention to the other players,” Echaorre said. “They basically told us that other players had to step up because they were focusing in on Erin and Vicki.”
Fronting Aguilera in the paint and forcing Glasspool out of her sets, Santa Teresa kept pace in the second when Shabnam Baigzad drained a straight-away trey, keeping the Saints to within one possession.
But Burley scored the next four points for San Benito, while Santa Teresa went cold from the free-throw line, pushing the Lady Balers out to a 19-13 lead at the break.
“Jackie and Ellie really had big games tonight,” Kaplansky said. “It was a great spark they both gave us.
“But it really came down to our defense.”
Despite San Benito’s fourth-quarter fatigue, the game was all but iced in the third when the Lady Balers shutout Santa Teresa 7-0 and took a 26-13 lead to the final stanza.
The Saints had chances from the charity stripe early on in the third, but struggled all game to make any freebies, finishing 4 of 19 from the line. Meanwhile, Echaorre made it a 10-point game when she forced a steal, then followed it with an easy lay-in, while Glasspool pushed the lead even further when she completed a three-point play just 13 seconds later.
San Benito forced 22 turnovers against Santa Teresa, six of which came during the third quarter.
“If you’re not making shots … it really helps when you get out on defense,” said Kaplansky, whose Lady Balers shot just 29 percent from the field on Saturday, but never trailed the Saints after grabbing a 4-2 lead in the first quarter. “I’m really proud with our third-quarter effort.”
Santa Teresa’s two leading scorers in sisters Madison and Cassidy Sanders-Curry, who combined to average more than 21 points per game this season, were held to just nine points total on Saturday night on 3 of 19 shooting. Madison Sanders-Curry finished with a team-high seven points.
“We wanted to match that intensity, and I think defensively we did,” Peterson said. “We just had a hard time finding our offense tonight.
“I think their pressure was definitely something that hurt us, but we just didn’t respond the way we should have responded from an aggression standpoint.”
And although Echaorre’s point-total was not head-and-shoulders above her teammates — Vanessa Casalegno, Burley, Aguilera and Glasspool all finished with six points apiece — having a non-starter deposit a game-high output certainly made life easier for the Lady Balers, whose 22 points allowed was the lowest point total for Santa Teresa all season.
“It helped getting Jackie the ball because they didn’t recognize her as a shooter, and she stepped up and hit her shots,” Glasspool said. “She really carried us, I think.”
Notes:
San Benito shot 29 percent (14 of 49) from the field and 42 percent (5 of 12) from the free-throw line … Santa Teresa shot 18 percent (8 of 44) from the field and 21 percent (4 of 19) from the free-throw line … The Lady Balers committed 14 turnovers, while the Saints committed 22 turnovers … In the other Division I semifinal, No. 3 Evergreen Valley (18-7) will square off against No. 10 Menlo-Atherton, which upset No. 3 Gilroy by a 50-46 margin on Saturday.
TEAM 1 2 3 4 F
SB 9 10 7 10 36
ST 4 9 0 9 22
San Benito (36): V. Casalegno 3-7 0-1 6, V. Aguilera 2-10 2-8 6, E. Glasspool 2-6 1-1 6, N. Rianda 2-5 0-0 4, J. Echaorre 3-12 0-0 8, E. Burley 2-5 2-2 6.
Three-point goals: E. Glasspool 1, J. Echaorre 2.
Santa Teresa (22): E. Poon 3-7 0-1 6, J. Gipson 1-3 0-3 3, S. Baigzad 1-2 0-0 3, L. Ross 0-0 1-2 1, C. Sanders-Curry 0-9 2-9 2, M. Sanders-Curry 3-10 1-4 7.
Three-point goals: J. Gipson 1, S. Baigzad 1.
