The Cajon Cowgirls are the CIF playoffs’ second seed, and 27-2 on the season, so Wilson coach Byron Ferguson knew it would be an upset for his sixteenth-seeded Bruins to pull off a win. “We kind of ran into a buzzsaw there in the third quarter, didn’t we?” he said after the game, a 73-34 loss at home, which ends their season in the second round.
Things started out brightly enough for the Bruins, as they scored first and stayed within striking distance for the whole first quarter, down just six points, 15-9, after eight minutes. They kept the Cowgirls’ excellent center, Darshae Burnside, mostly bottled up in the first, as she scored only four points, didn’t touch the ball often, and wasn’t too much of a presence on the boards—the physical presence of Wilson’s Tiffany Bailey and Cheyanne Butler seemed to wear Burnside down early. Then, when the Cowgirls would kick out, they weren’t hitting their shots.
In the second quarter, that began to change, as the three’s started falling and Burnside had 8 of her team’s 17 points. Still, despite 3/11 shooting from their starting guards, the Bruins were within ten, at 32-22. Things were optimistic as the team came out to warm up.
And then: the buzzsaw. Fueled by incredible shooting from outside the arc (the Cowgirls shot 57% on the evening even with the sluggish start), Cajon ripped off a 20-0 start, and won the quarter 22-2, putting the game out of reach at 54-24. Wilson’s guards continued to pop long shots throughout the stretch, and as none were falling (the Bruins didn’t make a three-pointer until halfway through the fourth quarter, after 20 misses), things kept getting worse. Things trended that way in the fourth, and the game ended with Cajon up 73-34. Wilson’s two post players, Bailey and Butler, shot 70% but took only ten attempts, as the Bruins went 1/22 from behind the arc and got just 11 points out of 31 shots by their two starting guards (a combined 3/31, with the lion’s share of those attempts coming from Ciarra Ford).
Bailey finished with 13 points and Butler with 12 boards and 8 points; Ford finished with 9 points. For Cajon, Burnside dominated, with a game-high 25 points and a game-high 22 rebounds. She was backed up by teammate Maya Darby, who rode 60% three-point shooting to 18 points.
The loss ends the season for the 13-17 Bruins. Despite hitting the buzzsaw, Ferguson was still pleased with his team’s season. “I thought we played our best basketball in the last six games,” he said. “We just had a really bad quarter against a really good team tonight.”
Cajon, definitely one of the most complete teams in the bracket and probably worthy of their second-seed, now moves on to the quarterfinals, where they’ll host a Lynwood squad that’s surprised some people in the offseason.