Instead of facing a foreign opponent in the imposing Anaheim Convention Center, as they did last year, the Centaurs played a familiar Mira Costa squad at neutral Godinez High School in Santa Ana last Friday night in the finals and won 55-49.
“Losing last year crushed me. I was not going to let that happen to me or my teammates again.” said Centaur senior Kelsey Ueda after Culver City topped the Norco Cougars, 68 to 55, last Tuesday in the CIF 2AA semifinals.
“This game felt totally different from last year,” junior point guard Lindsey Tanita, who finished the game with five points, five rebounds, and six assists, said. “Besides a smaller arena, we knew a lot of players from Mira Costa, and so I feel like we knew what to expect.”
Culver City went on a 7-0 run in the second half of the first quarter to overcome an early deficit.
Michelle Curry broke several triple-teams and Kelsey Ueda made free-throws to give Culver a 26-17 halftime advan-tage. Sophomore Kailey Tooke, who had seemed like she may have not been able to play after her ankle injury in the last minutes of the semifinal game, played well in the first half.
The third quarter was Curry’s time to shine as she converted two consecutive three-point plays for a 15 point third quarter lead.
Mira Costa caught up and took a brief one point lead in the fourth quarter.
“We came back together, and got back on the same page,” Ueda said.
“I think everyone grew a lot this season, and so we were really prepared for this game,” Tanita said. “We had a mindset that we can win the game, as opposed to last year where it was a whole new experience.”
The experienced team heavily relied last year on point guard Taylor Tanita, who is redshirting at University of California San Diego.
This year the team received Curry. “We’ve never really had a huge post presence, so once Michelle started playing, we had to adjust. It was a lot of fun playing with her,” says Tanita. Curry had 22 points in the Championship game.
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