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Kalani Takase | ScoringLiveJanuary 3, 2020, 10:48pm
Fri, Jan 3, 2020 @ Mid-Pacific
MANOA — Madi Sagawa scored six of her game-high 11 points in the fourth quarter and No. 9 Mid-Pacific held on for a 29-28 win over visiting Hawaii Baptist in Interscholastic League of Honolulu girls basketball Friday at Mills Gymnasium.
The Owls improved to 16-3 overall and 5-0 in league games to remain atop the ILH's Division II standings.
The Eagles fell to 10-7 overall and 2-2 in ILH play.
"In the second half I think we were able to get stops and just pick up energy and if we can feed off our defense then I think we don't play as tight offensively, but it was a total grind," Mid-Pacific coach Reid Sagawa said.
HBA held a 20-19 lead after three quarters, but Mid-Pacific took the lead for good 51 seconds into the final stanza on a Madi Sagawa 12-foot jumper. Kenzie Lee stretched the Owls' lead to 25-20 after a pair of left-hand layups.
Philip brought the Eagles to within 25-22 with her 17-foot jumper with 2:02 to play. However, Sagawa hit a runner from the right elbow on Mid-Pac's ensuing possession and then went coast-to-coast for a transition layup on its next trip down the court to give her team its largest lead at 29-22 with under a minute remaining.
Philip drained a 3-pointer from the left wing with 40.1 seconds left and Alexis Dang hit a tough, contested trey from the right wing with 1.1 on the clock to make it a one-point game, but Paige Farhni found Lee on the inbounds pass and the Owls ran out the clock to preserve the win.
"HBA is such a good team — Sasha, Lexi, no matter how you prepare for them, they're going to find ways to score, they're so competitive — so we got lucky," Reid Sagawa said.
Dang, last year's All-Hawaii D2 Player of the Year, did not score her first points until midway through the third quarter and was held to just three made field goals in all.
"It's a matter of picking our poison, even Emi Wada, the point guard, she's tough," said Reid Sagawa, who offered his well wishes for Hayley Taka, who left the game early in the second half, when she came down hard following a collision and appeared to hit the back of her head on the court.
"We were trying to contain (Wada), we were trying to contain Sasha — it was real unfortunate that Hayley got hurt, you don't want to see that happen to anyone, so I hope she's OK — and if she was healthy, definitely a different story," he added.
After being tended to by athletic trainers from both schools, Taka was able to walk off on her own power.
HBA led by as many as six points early on on Taka's basket off a backdoor feed from Dang with 4:20 left in the first quarter. Mid-Pacific closed out the opening stanza with a 6-0 run, including four straight points from Lauren Hayashi, to tie it at 8.
Mid-Pacific took its first lead on a baseline drive and bucket by Lee to pull ahead, 13-12, with 4:28 left in the first half, but the Eagles reclaimed the lead with 27 seconds until halftime on Philip's 12-foot jumper to send her team into the break with a slim 16-15 lead.
Sagawa said he was hoping to keep it a low-scoring affair.
"We wanted to. We knew HBA scores 50, 60 points easy, so we just wanted to value our possessions — we weren't in any rush — so we just wanted to make sure we got high-percentage shots. Even if our shots didn't go in in the first half, we wanted to grind clock to keep it under control so that we would have a chance, just by keeping it close."
HBA shot 30 percent from the field (12 of 40), including 2 of 12 from beyond the arc (16.7 percent). It turned it over 18 times in all, 12 of them coming in the first half, including its first three possession.
"It was a cold shooting night and I thought we gotta make our layups; when we had the gimmes, we didn't finish," Eagles coach Robin Yamaguchi lamented. "A lot of it in the beginning was unforced turnovers, I thought, so if we can cut down those unforced turnovers, then we would have at least — because I think we played pretty good defense, we forced some turnovers — but we just cannot convert; we just couldn't convert. We just gotta hit some shots. I don't know what the 3-point percentage was, but it was pretty ugly."
Mid-Pac shot 12 of 42 from the field (28.6 percent), but made five of eight field goals in the fourth quarter. It was 1 of 8 on 3-pointers (12.5 percent).
Hayashi and Lee had six points apiece and Farhni added four for the Owls, who committed 17 turnovers.
Sagawa praised the play off Lee off the bench.
"Kenzie, I can't say enough about her. She's a sophomore, she practices hard, she works hard every single day and her bread and butter is her defense — every day we know she's going to bring her defense — and I think her aggression and her on-ball pressure epitomizes what we're trying to do defensively," Sagawa said. "Tonight she looked for her shots. Sometimes she's a little hesitant, a lot of it is just she's young, (lacks) confidence, but she was able to drive and finish with layups on the left side — I think that was huge — and I think it just fed our girls with even more energy seeing Kenzie doing that."
Phillip scored nine points, Wada eight and Dang seven in the loss.
The teams combined to attempt just eight free throws; Mid-Pac was 4 for 4 from the line, while HBA was 2 for 4.
There were nine lead changes in the game.
The Owls have a quick turnaround as they will host Iolani II (0-3) Saturday at 4:30 p.m.
The Eagles will look to rebound when they take on Sacred Hearts (3-1) Wednesday, 6 p.m. at Dan Liu Gymnasium.
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