Mid-Pacific's Madi Sagawa fires up a shot over Hanalani's Lishae Scanlan in the first half. Michael Lasquero | SL

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Sat, Dec 21, 2019 @ Hanalani

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Mid-Pacific

45

Hanalani

42

Final	1	2	3	4
Mid-Pacific (9-0, 22-4)	8	10	15	12	45
Hanalani (8-1, 15-2)	15	11	2	14	42

J. Nava 17 pts  3 3pm  2/4 FTs

M. Sagawa 23 pts  4 3pm  5/6 FTs

MILILANI — There will be plenty of joy in the Sagawa household over the next few days.

Madi Sagawa scored a season-high 23 points despite battling foul trouble to help No. 10 Mid-Pacific rally to a 45-42 road win over Hanalani in a meeting of unbeatens Saturday.

The Owls (4-0) rallied from an eight-point halftime deficit to knock off the Royals (3-1) and assume sole possession of first place in the Interscholastic League of Honolulu's Division II girls basketball standings.

"It's a really big win because we were both undefeated and we had all practices this week and we were working really hard so I think this really helped our confidence," said Sagawa, who made four of her team's five 3-pointers — two in each half.

Sagawa hit two triples in the first quarter; her second gave the Owls a 6-2 lead early on. However, Hanalani closed out the opening stanza with a 13-2 run that included 3-pointers by Faith Mersburg, Jacie Nava and Tatem Foster, to take a 15-8 lead into the second quarter.

The Royals held a 26-18 lead at the intermission, but Mid-Pacific coach Reid Sagawa delivered a consistent message at the break, according to his daughter.

"At halftime he always says to clear the score and start the game over again so that we don't play with the score (in mind); we just play our game, so that really helped us," Madi Sagawa said.

That it certainly did, as the third quarter was all Owls.

Mid-Pacific surged ahead with a 15-0 run to open the half and allowed just a single Hanalani bucket in the quarter, on a Lishae Scanlan putback.

Hanalani committed nine of its 22 total turnovers in the third period, including two defensive five-second violations and an illegal screen.

Reid Sagawa said he drew upon his team's out-of-conference schedule to motivate the bunch.

"I told them that ‘we've been in this position before — especially in preseason, we had tough games against Kahuku, Mililani, Radford — so just stay the course, try grind it out on defense and then offensively try be a little bit more patient, make them work and hopefully we can get a couple easy baskets, get a little closer and pick up our energy from there,' " he explained.

Coach Sagawa added that he urged his players to flush the nine first-half fouls they committed, including three by starting guard Caylina Lindbo.

"In the first half we got into foul trouble so it's hard to put ball pressure when you're kind of cuffed, so we had to hit the reset button and we just had to reinforce to put ball pressure without fouling — ‘on-ball pressure's job is just to make the second pass, so the second pass can possibly get the steal' — so we were able to clean it up a little without fouling the ball," Sagawa added.

Mid-Pacific pulled even on Madi Sagawa's pull-up transition 3-pointer from the left wing to tie the score at 26 with 5:04 left in the third quarter. Later in the period, however, she picked up her second foul in a three-minute span (her fourth overall). Still, Sagawa managed to get a steal on the ensuing Hanalani possession and turned it into a three-point play after she made a fast break layup and was fouled in the process.

After she converted the subsequent free throw to make it a 30-26 lead for the Owls, Sagawa was pulled from the game for the final 2:25 of the quarter.

Coach Sagawa was critical of his daughter's play, but at the same time credited her teammates to stepping up theirs in her absence.

"When she picked up her fourth — maybe she should have had a little better decision-making on that on that play — so we wanted to try to get her out as fast as possible," he said. "But fortunately we were able to get some transition points with her, but the key thing is when she was out the team definitely stepped it up defensively without her in there and that allowed us to buy us time, so it just goes back to defense."

Mid-Pacific led 33-28 after three quarters, but Nava almost single-handedly kept the Royals in it, scoring 12 of her team-high 17 points in the fourth quarter.

Maria Ralar's putback off of a Nava missed 3-pointer brought Hanalani to within 42-40 with 1:10 left in the game. Madi Sagawa made a pair of free throws with 36.9 seconds left to extend it back to a four-point Mid-Pac lead. Nava then hit a runner in the lane to make it 44-42 with 28 seconds remaining.

The Royals then fouled Paige Fahrni to send her to the free-throw line, where she made one of two. Hanalani eventually got the ball back with 8.2 seconds to play and found Nava on the right wing for a potential game-tying 3, but it was off the mark and Fahrni grabbed the rebound to secure the win for the Owls.

Fahrni, who came off the bench Saturday, was tasked with defending Scanlan, a talented sophomore post, for much of the game. She drew Scanlan's fifth foul with 4:41 left on the clock and scored four of her eight points thereafter.

"I think she did really good," Madi Sagawa said of Fahrni, a senior center. "She did a good job at the end, drawing contact and (drawing Scanlan's) fifth foul."

When Scanlan fouled out it proved to be a turning point, Reid Sagawa noted.

"Once Lishae had foul trouble, then moreso we wanted to try and pound it in and then if she wasn't in we felt that maybe we could get a couple easier baskets on the inside, but Hanalani is tough. We weren't able to do what we wanted to do, just because their pressure was really good and they made it difficult for us to get the ball inside," he said.

Scanlan, who helped the hand-picked Team Aloha capture the Elite Is Earned Spring Invitational in California last April, finished with 10 points, but eight of those came before halftime. She was just 4 of 10 from the free-throw line; Hanalani shot 6 of 17 as a team from the charity stripe.

Mid-Pacific was 10 of 16 on free throws.

Both teams next play on Jan. 3; the Owls will host fourth-place Hawaii Baptist (2-1), while the Royals will visit second-place Sacred Hearts (3-0).