Santa Barbara High’s Jocelin Petatan fades away on a jump shot. Petatan was the Dons’ second-leading scorer.
Defending CIF champion Santa Barbara High began its title defense on Saturday with a 65-27 victory over visiting San Gabriel in JR Richards Gymnasium.
Amber Melgoza’s 29 points and 12 rebounds led Santa Barbara into the second round of the CIF Division 2AA playoffs. The fourth-seeded Dons will travel to play Chino, 65-39 winners over Carter, on Wednesday.
“It felt good,” Melgoza said of getting playoffs underway. “I feel like we have a lot of pressure on us since we won CIF last year but we’re just taking it game by game.”
Melgoza played deep into the fourth quarter but had to sit out half of the second quarter after picking up her third personal foul. The Dons were leading 23-6 when Melgoza went down and finished the half leading 30-12.
“Thank goodness we were up because if we weren’t, it’d just be really frustrating for me,” Melgoza said. “I’m glad my whole team stuck together and they were playing hard.”
Melgoza returned for the second half and scored 18 of her 29 in the final two quarters.
“It was a good effort but we got to clean some things up,” said Dons head coach Andrew Butcher. “Too many unforced turnovers and then our half-court offense really struggled at times. So if we can get those two things better we’ll have a good chance to do well in this thing.”
Jada Howard finished with a double-double collecting 10 points and 10 rebounds. Kimberly Gebhardt pulled down nine rebounds and had a team-high six steals while Jocelin Petatan was the team’s second-leading scorer with 12. Freshman Cassandra Gordon added nine points.
“They were in a box and one so they were pretty much face-guarding Amber,” Butcher said. “And so we have a lot of players who can put the ball in the hole and we spread the ball around.”
Butcher also praised Petatan for her defense Serena Tran, San Gabriel’s leading scorer with 14.
The Matadors finish their season with a record of 18-12 and a runner-up result in the Almont League.
Jada Howard splits San Gabriel’s CoCo So and Melissa Quach for a fast-break layup.
