Angelina Bado, Ocean View rally past Newport Harbor
GARDEN GROVE — It’s been a tough start to the girls’ basketball campaign at Ocean View, where only three players return from last year’s playoff team.
Four current players, including two starters, are sidelined by injury, two of them done for the season.
This year is about building toward next year, when the Seahawks, head coach Ryan Hasegawa promises, are going to be very good.
Things are starting, somehow, to fall into place, and that was on display Friday afternoon when, behind a brilliant Angelina Bado and a defensive performance, Ocean View rallied to knock off Newport Harbor, 38-36, at Pacifica’s Mariner Mayhem Tournament.
Bado scored 28 points — 18 of the Seahawks’ 20 points before halftime. She also grabbed seven rebounds and delivered some incisive inside feeds while spearheading an increasingly disruptive defense that forced its opponent into a 7-of-40 shooting afternoon.
“I think it’s the best team [and] family performance that we’ve had, against what I think is a pretty quality team...” said Hasegawa, whose team finished second in its pool with the victory. “It was just staying composed, making small defensive adjustments and settling into our offense a little better.”
Neither team shot particularly well. The far smaller Seahawks were outrebounded, 46-28, but they committed just six of the game’s 21 fouls, spent the fourth quarter in the double-bonus, and scored eight of their 10 points in the period from the free-throw line to finish the game on an 18-9 run.
“We play as a family, we play as a team,” said Bado, who pulled Ocean View (4-6) within a point of the Sailors with a nifty pass inside for Guadalupe Guzman, then followed with two free throws for the lead with 2:19 to play. “We did a lot of things we’ve practiced, and slowly, slowly, I feel like our team is beginning to grow within each other. It’s showing on the court, thankfully.”
Newport Harbor, which was 2-25 last year after going 38-12 with a CIF Southern Section title the two previous seasons, believes it can contend for the Wave League championship and looked like it early on, hitting seven of nine shots in the opening quarter and their first attempt of the second quarter.
The Sailors, against an aggressive zone, went cold after that, briefly losing their lead before building a seven-point, third-quarter edge behind Robinson (13 points, eight rebounds) and 6-foot inside-outside threat Kaitlyn Leibe (10 points, six rebounds), then watching it all fall apart.
They struggled to contain Bado, committing fouls as she carved through the lane, and couldn’t handle Ocean View’s pressure, turning the ball over on 13 of 20 possessions over an 11-minute span deep into the fourth quarter. By then, the Seahawks, aided by five offensive rebounds, were up by three after Emma Wakabayashi, a defensive terror, hit a pair of free throws with 2:01 to go.
Newport Harbor had opportunities to pull it out. Bado made two free throws after Leibe had missed two for the Sailors, extending the lead to four, but Leibe made her second three-pointer with 23 seconds left, and the deficit was two when Bado missed one of two from the stripe just nine seconds later. Robinson traveled at midcourt after the inbounds pass, and it was over.
“That’s been kind of the thing, turnovers and not being able to get rebounds...” Newport Harbor coach Jillian Angell said. “We weren’t moving, we weren’t talking, and [Bado’s] a great player. She was on, her shots were falling, and ours weren’t. There are some things that we have to clean up, and we are not doing it in practice, and so it’s not happening in games.”
Pacifica Mariner Mayhem Tournament
Gray Pool
Ocean View 38, Newport Harbor 36
Ocean View 13 - 7 - 8 - 10 — 38
Newport Harbor 16 - 7 - 6 - 7 — 36
OV — Bado 28, Solis 6, Guzman 2, Wakabayashi 2.
3-pt. goals — Bado 4.
Fouled out — None.
Technicals — None.
Newport Harbor — Robinson 13, Leibe 10, George 6, Nolan 6, Briggs 1.
3-pt. goals — Robinson 3, Leibe 2.
Fouled out — None.
Technicals — None.
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