It’s not, objectively, that hard to be a Rabbit if you’re a girls’ basketball fan. Appearing in their ninth straight CIF-SS title game, Poly won their third section championship of the last four years with a 58-38 win over Corona Santiago. Poly held the normally sharp-shooting Sharks to just 13-55 from the field, and an astounding 1-14 from beyond the arc, in a total team effort that will send them into the state tournament on a high note.
The Rabbits essentially sealed the game in the first three minutes of the second half, when Brittany Wilson—wearing her injured sister’s jersey—scored Poly’s first nine points in just under three minutes, giving her team a 36-22 lead. After struggling in the first half, picking up a few quick fouls and not sinking a single field goal, Brittany was given a pep talk by her sister just before the start of the second half. “I told her to not foul, to think about it and be patient,” Ashley said.
“I was kind of nervous at the beginning of the game,” Brittany admitted. “But once I hit the first shot, I got in the rhythm—I hate seeing my sister down.”
The story for Poly was depth—depth that allowed them to win a D-1 title by 20 points, with only three of their original starters (with Ashley Wilson and Thaddesia Southall both sustaining knee injuries). To start four underclassmen, two of them players who originally came off the bench, and put up a performance like that is impressive, to say the least.
More impressive was Poly’s defensive performance, from start to finish, as their on-ball pressure disrupted Santiago’s drive-and-kick offense, and visibly frustrated top-scorer Jasmine Lister. “That was the goal,” said Poly coach Carl Buggs. “Make her have to work for everything—holding her to 15 points, nobody else with more than six, I’ll take it.”
Poly did a good job utilizing their height advantage in the post, as they got 13 of their 14 first-quarter points in the paint, thanks to the hard-to-handle combo of Sheila Boykin, Destiny King, TaNitra Byrd, and Southall. As their pressure continued to fluster Santiago, the lead ballooned to eight at halftime, as the Sharks shot just 24% from the field in the first half.
After Wilson’s boost to start the second half, Byrd scored six straight, and Poly led 44-29 after three. Lister hit her team’s only three-pointer to kick things off in the fourth, but the rallying call was left unfulfilled, as the Sharks would only score another three points in the seven minutes before the starters came out.
Wilson led Poly scorers with 14, backed by Byrd with 11. The Rabbits pulled down 23 offensive boards, and out-rebounded Santiago 59-38. Sheila Boykin led the Rabbits with 13 boards, followed by Tajanae Winston with 10. The high scorer for Santiago was Jasmine Lister, with 15 points.
Though they aren’t exactly strangers to championship success, nobody on the Poly team or staff was complacent after the win, as players danced with each other and let loose. “Last year, going to state, it felt incomplete because we lost this game [to Cajon]. This year, if we’re fortunate enough to make it back, we’ll have this piece in place.”
That next step of the journey begins in just a few hours—the Rabbits will take Sunday off, and then get back to work on Monday for a Tuesday evening game. The state bracket will be released this afternoon, and we’ll post it as soon as it’s available!
