Ontario Women’s Christian Basketball Team Advances to Third Consecutive CIF-SS Section Final – Daily Bulletin

ONTARIO — Thirteen turned out to be a lucky number Wednesday night for the Ontario women’s Christian basketball team.

A pair of first-half 13-0 runs helped the Knights take control early on their way to an 81-54 rout of Brentwood in a CIF Southern Section Division 2A semi-final match.

The top-seeded Knights (29-3) advance to their third straight section final, where they will face No. 2 Santiago on Saturday.

“It’s exciting to be in the finals for the third year in a row,” said junior Chloe Briggs. “I think this year it really helped us with a schedule that gave us good competition.”

One of those games was a non-league game between those same teams at Ontario Christian three weeks ago. Ontario Christian won that game by a narrow 69-63, but that was without Briggs (food poisoning), while Brentwood was without junior Amber Furch, who scored a team-high 19 points on Wednesday.

“That says a lot about the team to beat them without me,” Briggs said.

Briggs and senior transfer Shayla Gillmer combined to dominate the Eagles on Wednesday.

Briggs finished with 33 points on 9-of-14 shooting, while adding nine rebounds. Gillmer, Briggs’ teammate on the Team Taurasi travel ball team that signed with BYU, scored 18 of 27 points in the first half and grabbed 13 rebounds. Briggs and Gillmer played the entire game.

“Since I’ve been here we’ve been talking about going to the final,” Gillmer said.

Ontario Christian actually started the game with a 13-0 run, holding Brentwood (21-11) scoreless for the first four minutes and 11 seconds. When the Eagles came within six points in the second quarter, another 13-0 run gave the Knights some breathing room. Ontario Christian extended their lead to 31 points early in the fourth quarter.

Size was one of Ontario Christian’s many advantages, with Gillmer 6-foot-1, Briggs 6-0 and Brooklyn Goedhart Jr. 5-11 in the lead, the Knights held a 27-16 rebounding advantage in the first half. -time. Goedhart finished with seven points and eight rebounds.

Ontario Christian coach Matt Tumambing believes this time the Knights can secure that elusive CIF title after falling short in championship games the past two years.

“We have more pieces in place,” he said. “I think last year we had to wait and see what (final opponent) Sage Hill was going to do. It’s different this year.

Shots weren’t falling for Ontario Christian guards Madeline Martinez and Dejah Saldivar on Wednesday, who combined three 3-pointers and nine points, but Tumambing says they did some extra shooting work that hopefully , will bear fruit in the final.