North Coast Section girls basketball: Carondelet, Cardinal Newman advance to Open Division semifinals

Cougars, Cardinals pull away late to win tough first-round games; Defending state D1 champion Salesian, San Ramon Valley await in Wednesday's semifinals

It's not where you start, but where you finish.

That was the credo of Cardinal Newman-Santa Rosa's girls basketball team on Thursday, and for that matter, the rest of the season.

The third-seeded Cardinals overcame some cold shooting early but heated up late in a 59-42 North Coast Section Open Division first-round win over Heritage-Brentwood, which got 10 points apiece from McDonald's All-American Amanda Muse, Kendall McClure and Grace Hernandez.

NORTH COAST SECTION GIRLS BASKETBALL BRACKETS

According to Harold Abend of Prep2Prep, Abbie Mullins had 19 points thanks largely to five 3-pointers and Kaida Angelo added 16 points. Newman missed its first 12 3-point tries but made 12 of its next 21 to win going away.

The Cardinals (23-6) travel to second seed San Ramon Valley (25-3) in Wednesday's semifinals. Fourth-seed Carondelet (22-5) will face No. 1 seed Salesian (23-4) at Pinole Valley High School.

Salesian and San Ramon Valley had byes.

"Perimeter shooting is part of our game so we had to be able to do other things and win in other ways," Newman coach Monica Mertle told Harold Abend of Prep2Prep. "At the end of the day, it's the end result we're looking at and not how pretty it was or how well we shot. We got the end result we wanted."

Carondelet 66, Acalanes 62

In an interesting matchup of coaches, Kelly Sopak and his host Cougars got 17 points from Layla Dixon and 15 by Jamie Kent in the first-round Open win.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, Acalanes (20-7) fought back from a 13-point deficit in the fourth quarter to actually tie the game at 52-52 with less than a minute to play.

But Dixon, a freshman making her first start, scored four points down the stretch to advance to the semifinals.

Ariana Hallstrom had 13 points and Emily Du and Dulci Vail contributed 12 each for the Dons, who are coached by former Carondelet coach Margaret Gartner.

Gartner, who compiled nearly 600 wins in her 22 seasons, and won a state title, coaches in the offseason with current Carondelet coach Kelly Sopak with the AAU California Stars.

Acalanes and Heritage will play for fifth place on Wednesday. All teams in the Open Division advance to the CIF Northern California playoffs, which begin Feb. 28.