SAN FRANCISCO — It wasn’t the outcome they were looking for Saturday night, but the Upper Lake Cougars aren’t done in the playoffs just yet. They simply turn another page after losing 63-33 to the University Red Devils in the North Coast Section Division 5 girls basketball championship game at Kezar Pavilion in San Francisco.
Upper Lake (28-2) will host Portola (20-11) on Wednesday at 6 p.m. when the NorCal playoffs Division 5 playoffs open. University (24-4) also advances to the NorCals, but will be competing in the Division 3 field as the No. 1 seed, so the Cougars won’t have to face them again.
“We’re proud of the girls for getting here,” Upper Lake co-head coach Annie Pivniska-Petrie said following the loss. “We had such a great turnout of fans tonight. The girls knew it and could feel it.”
Many of those fans left homes on the Northshore that are still without electricity following a round of heavy snowfall Thursday night into Friday morning.
Upper Lake played the middle game of a three-game championship set Saturday that began with Urban beating Head-Royce 52-45 in the Division 5 boys championship game and concluded with the University boys defeating Justin-Siena of Napa 67-59 in the Division 4 finals.
In suffering only their second loss in 30 games this season, the Lady Cougars ran into a University squad that led from start to finish. The taller Red Devils, the No. 2 seed in the original 16-team Division 5 field compared to Upper Lake’s No. 4, didn’t depend so much on their height to score against the Cougars, but their smart ballhandling and passing as they deftly worked the ball around the perimeter to find an open shooter behind the 3-point line. University sank a total of seven 3-pointers — a third of their point total — but didn’t depend on any one shooter for those 3s. Five different Red Devils connected from long range.
University’s scoring was equally diversified. Sophomore forward Kate Kennedy led the way with 14 points, junior point guard Isabella Perez, the team’s captain, added 12 more, junior forward Gabriella Kelley finished with 10, and freshman guard Maya Raymond had nine. Even more impressive is that the Red Devils don’t have a single senior on their talented and deep roster.
“We were prepared for that,” Pivniska-Petrie said of University’s long-range shooting game. “They’re just a next-level team.”
Added co-head coach Raelene Cromwell, “We did our best to prepare for them, but it’s hard to simulate what they do in a practice. They’re just a very good team.”
Upper Lake kept it close for a half, scoring the final five points of the second quarter to make it a manageable 33-23 deficit by halftime.
“A 10-point lead in the playoffs is like two points,” Pivniska-Petrie said.
“That was big,” Cromwell added of cutting into University’s right before the half. “We told the girls to keep their heads up, keep battling hard because we can do this.”
University had other ideas as the second half opened and it wasn’t just about the Red Devils’ offense, but their defense as well.
“We didn’t have an open shot all night,” Pivniska-Petrie said. “They had a hand in our face on every shot. They did a good job of denying the ball to our guards, which was new to us.”
University kept a close eye on Upper Lake center Taylar Minnis throughout the game, with Red Devils sophomore center Damysia Walls limiting her opportunities down low while her teammates shut down the passing lanes inside. Minnis finished with just nine points.
The Red Devils also did a good job of guarding Upper Lake’s recently red-hot 3-point shooter, junior Jayme Zimmerschied, sticking tight to her whenever she entered the game. Zimmerschied had only two points and the Cougars did not have a 3-pointer all night.
Upper Lake’s leading scorer was senior point guard Maddy Young, who finished with 10 points despite being less than 100 percent because of a minor knee injury she sustained during her participation Thursday and Friday at the CIF State Wrestling Championships in Bakersfield.
“We couldn’t play her as much as we wanted to,” Cromwell said.
Turnovers, something the Cougars did a pretty good job of avoiding early on — they trailed just 20-14 after one quarter — began to mount as the game progressed. While the Red Devils didn’t make the most of those opportunities early on, they did in the second half — almost every single time.
Back-to-back Upper Lake turnovers to open the third quarter resulted in layups by University’s Kelley and Olivia Soenens. Minnis hit a pair of free throws before Kelley, one of the tallest players on the Red Devils squad, buried a 3-pointer with 4:15 left to make it 40-25. After an exchanged of baskets, Minnis’ offensive rebound and putback got the Cougars as close as 42-29, and they wouldn’t get any closer the rest of the way. University answered with a 7-0 quarter-ending run, which included three layups, two of them the result of Upper Lake turnovers.
While Upper Lake scored first in the fourth quarter as Minnis pounded her way inside for two points, University held the Cougars to a pair of free throws the rest of the way. Both teams emptied their benches during the final minutes so that their reserves could get a taste of playing in a sectional final.
Despite the lopsided final score, there weren’t many long faces as Upper Lake players received their runner-up section medals and the Division 5 second-place pennant during the awards ceremony immediately following the game. Perhaps like their coaches, the Cougars know there is still a lot of basketball left to be played, as many as five games should they make it all the way through the NorCals (four games, just like the sectional playoffs) and reach the CIF State Championships March 10-11 at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.
As with the sectional playoffs, the highest seed hosts every round of the NorCals, including the finals.
Playoff notes: Upper Lake needs one more win to tie the school and Lake County record for most wins in a single season, set by the 1993-94 Lady Cougars (29-1). Pivniska-Petrie was the starting point guard on that team. The Cougars reached the NorCal finals in 1991 and 1993 — Pivniska-Petrie’s freshman and junior years. Three of the reasons those early-1990s Upper Lake teams were so good are displayed on the school’s gym wall, the retired numbers of Pivniska-Petrie and teammates Jennifer Bryant and Laura Wilder. Wilder went on to play for Washington State University in the Pac-10 Conference … When seeding teams for the NorCals, schools don’t necessarily end up in the same division that they played in during sectional playoffs. They can be moved up or down as was the case three years when Clear Lake High School’s boys basketball team, the runner-up in the Division 5 sectional playoffs, was moved into Division 4 for the NorCals where the Cardinals went 1-1.
