Mills girls upstaged in OT of CCS Division III hoops finals

It’s the first section title in program history for the Regents, who entered the tournament as the No. 5 seed after posting a losing record in the regular season.

“I’m just so proud of the fight to get back in the game,” Mills head coach Justin Matsu said. “These girls never wavered. That’s been us all season long.”

Second-seeded Mills (19-8) entered halftime down 25-21 thanks to the hot shooting of Notre Dame junior Radhika Garapaty, who scored a game-high 22 points. The Regents then opened the third on an 11-4 run, taking their largest lead on Arabella Valbuena’s drive and left-handed finish with 3:24 left in the third. But the Vikings closed the quarter on their own 12-3 run as Chloe Lee came off the bench to sink a pair of quick 3s for her only points of the game and Michelle Tang scored on a put-back.

Garapaty’s fourth and final 3-pointer, a deep bomb at the end of the shot clock with 5:41 left in regulation, put the Regents up 44-37. Mills played lockdown defense from there and cut the lead to a single point on Luna Mengel-Yoshimura’s basket with 1:53 left. The Vikings had four chances to take the lead in the final 90 seconds, none better than the play Matsu ran out of a timeout with 5.8 seconds to go.

Riley Dela Fuente inbounded from the Mills bench to Mengel-Yoshimura, who caught it on the elbow, then found a cutting Tang, who had Garapaty beat to the basket. But Garapaty was able to foul Tang, who missed the first of two free throws before knocking down the second to force overtime.

In the extra period, Notre Dame (14-12) took a quick 48-44 lead off back-to-back baskets from junior center Amaris Agossa, who first scored off a pass from Supriya Agrawal, then put back a rare Garapaty miss. Agossa finished with eight points and 13 rebounds.

“I didn’t do a great job getting us into stuff to get us going early in overtime,” Matsu said. “They made some tough buckets, and we never really got a rhythm going. I’m gonna put that on me. I didn’t do a good job setting us up for success to start overtime like we needed to.”

Mills’ inability to score continued throughout OT, with Notre Dame going up 50-44 after Rio Funatsu made 2 of 4 free throws. A Sofia Kwan 3-pointer with 31 seconds slashed the Regents’ lead in half, but Funatsu returned to the line with 17.4 remaining and knocked down both free throws for the last of her 11 points, effectively ending the game.

“Balls just didn’t go in at the end,” Matsu said after his team mustered just 10 points across the fourth quarter and overtime.

Tang led the Vikings with 16 points, Kwan added 12 and Mengel-Yoshimura finished with seven. But Garapaty was the star, scoring nine in the second quarter to stake the Regents to a halftime lead and then drawing attention away from her teammates, as was the case to set up Agossa’s put-back that put Notre Dame up four in OT.

“She’s a big-time player. We saw her last year,” Matsu said, alluding to Mills’ win over Notre Dame in the 2023 semifinals. “She’s hard to scout for because she can do so many different things. We made her take tough shots, and she hit ’em, and you gotta tip your hat to her.”

Perhaps it would have been too poetic for Mills to complete the comeback, or maybe Notre Dame was just the team of destiny. Considering how the stars had seemed to align for the Vikings, maybe it just took someone else’s Cinderella run to knock them off their block.

Had Mills finished it off, it would have been one of those stories that Hollywood writers had dismissed for being too far-fetched. Justin Matsu’s father Dave Matsu coached Mills until he died suddenly Oct. 14, 2023, due to stroke-related symptoms. Justin Matsu had taken the team to his father’s grave the day before the game and, Saturday, he had plenty of support in the building, including some of his teammates from his Serra team that won a state championship in 2016.

“It’s always been the constant, maybe more so this year because of the circumstances, but everyone that showed up today has always been in our corner,” he said of the support. “We talk about ‘ohana,’ and it doesn’t just go with our program. It’s our families, the players’ families. I’ve been blessed to grow up in a culture like this. Many teams talk about family, but we live it every day. We preach it every day. If that doesn’t show today, I don’t know what does.”