Cap basketball finishes season of South City

No. 6-seed Capuchino (20-2) made it a clean sweep against No. 11 South City with a 45-26 win on Saturday, defeating the Warriors for the third time this season. With the win, the Lady Mustangs advance to the quarterfinals of the Central Coast Section Division III girls’ basketball playoffs.

“I thought they played really well,” Capuchino head coach Ron Rossi said. “We made mistakes, but we played through the mistakes really well. Our formula is tough defense, control the tempo, get good shots and hope for the best.”

The Mustangs pulled away early, opening the game on an 8-0 scoring run. Senior Liala Kinchen got South City (12-12) on the board with a baseline jumper, despite contact. 

The Warriors grabbed momentum midway through the second quarter behind a pair of scores from freshman Lamaiya Roberson. Cap grabbed the game right back, though, and piled on some late scores to head into halftime leading 25-9. 

“Lamaiya is awesome as a freshman,” South City head coach Jay Magat said. “She’s still getting adjusted to the high school basketball varsity level, and there’s a lot of room for growth. She’s promising, and I look forward to her putting a stamp on South City basketball.”

In the second half, the Mustangs continued what they started and dominated on both ends of the floor. Rossi said the team’s defensive performance was particularly outstanding. 

“We played really good,” Rossi said. “We set the tempo, and the defense in the first half let up only 9. We did let up a little more than we wanted to but a lot of them were at the end, so I’m very happy with the defense.” 

In the loss, South City put up its second-lowest offensive output of the season. Magat said the Warriors lacked the energy and discipline needed to produce both offensively and defensively. 

“What they need to do better is listening and executing,” Magat said. “We had a good game plan going into this, but we got into our bad habits and it cost us early.” 

Cap and South City met twice earlier in the season, with the Mustangs taking both matchups, 51-39 Jan. 9, and 45-23 Jan. 30. 

“We don’t let them take 3s, and we protect the top of the key where they like to catch and drive,” Rossi said. “I also think they press, and we have a really good press break. It’s almost to the point that we want teams to press us.” 

Coming into the first round of CCS, Rossi said he put the Mustangs through an unconventional practice style. The core of the practice style, Rossi said, was making sure his players “didn’t get bored.” 

“I got the boys’ freshman team to come down and scrimmage with them,” Rossi said. “One day I would get all over them, and then the next day I loved them again.” 

En route to the playoffs, the Mustangs went a flawless 12-0 in Peninsula Athletic League Ocean Division play. This season marked the first time Cap went undefeated in league since the reduced spring season in 2021, when they went 10-0.

“They never looked ahead,” Rossi said. “We went 12-0 in league, but we never said let’s go 12-0. We just said let’s win the next game.”

Capuchino will advance to the CCS quarterfinals, where they’ll travel to No. 3 Pioneer. Capuchino went into CCS as the No. 6 seed, despite their impressive 20-2 regular-season record. 

“I would’ve liked to have a little higher seed, but our non-league schedule was light and two of the bigger teams we wanted to play had to cancel,” Rossi said.

Heading into their quarterfinal matchup at Pioneer, Rossi recognized that they’ll likely face a steeper level of competition. Next week, the Mustangs will have to learn what it’s like to be the underdog, and Rossi said he’s ready for the challenge. 

“We’ve been chased for the last 13 games with a target on our back,” Rossi said. “Now I like the fact that we’re the underdog. We’ve got nothing to lose, and we’re playing with house money.”