Skyline College women’s basketball heads into offseason riding high

The Trojans ticked each of those boxes this season, after rallying in their playoff opener for a 70-59 victory at home last Thursday over Laney College. With the win, Skyline advanced to the sweet 16, where the program’s best postseason run in 13 years ended with a 61-49 loss at No. 1-seed San Joaquin Delta.

“I think we’ve had a pretty good decade of basketball,” Skyline head coach Chris Watters said. “I think that we’ve just kind of slowly been turning into a program that’s in the upper echelon of Northern California community college basketball.”

In nine years coaching the Skyline women, Watters has led the team to the postseason six times, including three straight from 2015-17, and another three straight in 2019, ’20 and ’22; there was no CCCAA basketball season in 2020-21.

The unique dynamic of this year’s squad was the relative youth. Of the 13 players on roster, 11 were freshmen, including many true freshmen who were high school seniors during the pandemic season in the spring of 2021. Nine of those freshmen were plucked from the Peninsula Athletic League, and only participated in hyper-abbreviated senior seasons last year.

“For those kids to have gone from playing an eight-game season … to now playing six months, I think we were just gassed,” Watters said. “We gave everything we had, and we didn’t have anything left, and we still battled the No. 1 team in the state.”

Despite the losing result at Delta, the play of Skyline made believers out of Watters and his young Trojans that they could play with the elite teams in the state. Delta held a slight 25-24 lead at halftime, thanks to Skyline’s ability to secure the ball and move it up the floor through Delta’s high-octane full-court press, resulting in the Mustangs averaging 15.8 steals per game this season, currently third in the state.

“We started off, turnovers are just going to happen in the game, that’s just the game of basketball,” Skyline sophomore Nicole Brunicardi said. “And as soon as the second quarter hit and we turned up our little fuse box, we just saw the potential we could have against Delta.”

Watters said, upon heading into the halftime locker room, he believed his team was going to pull off the upset. But a downturn in the third quarter, with Delta outscoring Skyline 18-10 in the quarter, changed the complexion of the game.

“I thought we had a chance to beat them, we just could not knock down any shots,” Watters said. “It was just one of those nights.”

Last Thursday’s victory over Laney saw Skyline knocking down shots though, especially from top scorers Lala Lautaimi with a game-high 27 points, and Malia Latu right behind with 25.

Lautaimi produced the most critical shot of the night, a buzzer-beater 3-pointer at the end of the third quarter from just inside the half-court line. Laney would go on to outscore Skyline 16-12 in the third and jumped ahead 44-43 with five seconds to play in the period. But Lautaimi gave the Trojans back the lead at the buzzer with a tide-changing heave.

“I think it gave us a huge boost because it put us back in the lead and it kind of took the wind out of Laney’s sails,” Watters said. “And then we kind of dominated the fourth quarter.”

Despite the largely freshman contingent, Skyline will look to reinvent itself next year.

Latu is set to transfer to University of San Francisco next season. And Brunicardi, who averaged 12.3 points per game and 8.8 rebounds this season, is hanging up her basketball sneakers to transfer academically to San Francisco State.

“The closure I got was at Skyline, and I’m happy it was,” Brunicardi said.

And while Delta advances to the CCCAA state championship tournament — starting Thursday at West Hills College Lemoore — the sense Skyline is a program on the rise, in talking with Watters, is palpable.

“I thought we were going to win that game,” Watters said. “They jumped on us in the first quarter, and we just battled back. … We were kind of able to battle through that and not be shaken.”

The eight-team field at the state championship tournament also features, from Northern California, No. 2 Sierra, No. 3 Butte and No. 4 Sequoias; and from Southern California, No. 1 Mt. San Antonio, No. 2 Irvine Valley, No. 3 Moorpark and No. 4 Palomar.

In the CCCAA men’s basketball postseason tournament, College of San Mateo was defeated in its playoff opener at home last Thursday, falling to Yuba 96-81. The men’s state tournament — also to be played at West Hills Lemoore — begins Friday.