Maranatha girls’ basketball used a late surge to take down the Trinity Knights on Thursday in the first round of Trinity’s inaugural “Reason for the Season” tournament as the Minutemen won, 48-44.
Trailing by five early in the fourth quarter, Maranatha (2-4) went on a 16-7 run to close out the contest at Newhall Church of the Nazarene.
Trinity (3-2) head coach James De Monbrun said his young team is still learning and, hopefully, is looking stronger come playoff time in February.
“That’s a game that will serve us well going forward,” he said.
Trinity started out cold before catching fire in the second quarter. At the heart of that was freshman Noa Peña, who had 11 of her game-high 24 points in that frame, including both of her makes from distance. She also had nine rebounds and five steals.
“She’s a talented kid,” De Monbrun said. “She works really hard, she’s a great teammate, she’s a selfless leader, and she knows there’s gonna be games where we gotta jump on her back and there’s gonna be games where the right thing for her to do is to be to set the table for everybody else.”
Junior Aleen Avannessian led the way for Maranatha with 17 points, knocking down three shots from beyond the arc. Senior Charlotte Lee had 10 points and senior Lori Derdarian had nine. Freshman Olivia Bird added eight points.
Avannessian had eight points in the final quarter and was key in the comeback for the Minutemen.
“Every shot’s harder when you’re being defended, and we left too many people open,” De Monbrun said. “We missed some assignments. We got caught on some screens that we shouldn’t have. For us, we talked about trying to play a full 32 minutes, and there’s been one game this year, one of our five, that we’ve played a complete 32. But in every game, we’ve had lapses for minutes at a time, and that’s what happens when you’re a young team. That’s to be expected. But our goal is to be playing our best basketball in January, February, not December.”
Freshman Molly Clark had nine points for Trinity and senior Gianna Duarte helped out with six, both on 3-pointers. Clark had a couple of putbacks during the second-quarter surge, while sophomore Madeline Heinrich had one in the fourth before hitting Duarte for a three to cut the deficit to just one.
“We knew that just the way they played and how their team is built, we weren’t going to run away from them, and they weren’t going to run away from us,” De Monbrun said. “This was going to be a fight for 32 minutes.”
Trinity is scheduled to play Santa Clarita Christian in the consolation round on Friday at 4:30 p.m.
Maranatha is slated to play at 7:30 p.m. on Friday in the semifinals against Simi Valley.
Tournament roundup
The SCCS Cardinals (3-1, 1-0) lost in the first round on Thursday to Simi Valley (3-2), 51-40.
Down big to start the game, the Cardinals did well to fight back throughout.
Cardinals head coach Larry Sulham said he was impressed with the fight despite the early deficit.
“They work very hard. You can see they didn’t give up,” Sulham said. “We got way down. If we could have started that earlier, we could have had a close game.”
Sophomore Emily Hackett had 20 points to lead the way for SCCS. She’s one of a few young players that Sulham sees as potentially helping to get the Cardinals into the postseason.
“Our goal this year is to make playoffs,” Sulham said. “Because, you know, first year we went 2-17, last year we went 8-10, so our goal this year is to get in there and make playoffs. I think that we have that potential this year.”
Freshman Maya Sawyer added seven for the Cardinals.
In the other first-round games on Thursday, Viewpoint beat Royal, 57-28, and Agoura beat Palmdale Charter Academy, 62-15.
Viewpoint will face Agoura at 6 p.m. on Friday in the semifinals.
Palmdale and Viewpoint are set to meet at 3 p.m. in the consolation semifinals.
