Warriors alone in first after win over CdM

Woodbridge’s girls basketball team unleashed a relentless defense Jan. 28 against Corona del Mar and came away with a 32-23 Pacific Coast League victory that put the Warriors on top of the league race.

Woodbridge pressed from the start, causing huge problems for CdM. The teams went into the game tied for first place in the league and CdM (16-5, 4-2) won the first-round game, 50-45.

“We sat with the team after the opening loss in league and said, ‘All you got to do is win four straight which isn’t easy, and then you have a chance to beat them here,’” Woodbridge coach Eric Bangs said.

The Warriors, who shared the league title with CdM last year, wanted the title outright, and the Jan. 28 victory was a big step toward that goal with just under two weeks left in the regular season.

“We had to tweak it,” Bangs said of the game plan compared with the first- round game. “All we did was really switch our two forwards; we put Anjali Ghadi on (Natalia) Bruening because she guarded (Krista) Anderson the first time and she had 18.

“We thought Lauren Baffo would do a nice job (on Anderson). And we went to full court man-to-man pressure. With six players (including the starters) it’s kind of hard to do, but when it’s for a championship game, you got to do it, so we picked up full court the whole time.”

CdM’s two big players were limited offensively. Bruening had 10 points, and Anderson 4 points.

Ghadi led the Warriors with 15 points. Baffo added 9 points.

“Nobody played really well (offensively),” Bangs said. “But it’s kind of hard to defensively all-out and play offense really well. Ghadi, Sierra (Vaglica) and (Lauren) Lum ran the show.”

“It was not a pretty offensive game,” Corona del Mar coach Mark Decker said. “First one to 30 wins, I guess, which is not exactly high-powered offense. But it was a frustrating night for us.

“Our post players were in foul trouble, and we weren’t getting them the ball enough. We really just didn’t do the things we needed to do on offense at all. We just did not want to handle the game the way we wanted to.”

Contact the writer: tburt@ocregister.com