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The unbelievable ride for this year’s St. Anthony’s girls’ team came to an end in the state championship against Pinewood, as they fell 62-44 at the Rabobank Arena in Bakersfield. <\/span><\/p>\nSt. Anthony possessed a significant height advantage, but despite pulling down 41 boards (20 of them offensive) to Pinewood’s 25, the Saints just couldn’t convert on the offensive end, shooting 17-54 in the game, or 31%. <\/span>Pinewood did an excellent job of packing it in and cutting off St. Anthony’s post players, and St. Anthony never adjusted, something head coach James Anderson repeatedly took the blame for in the postgame press conference.<\/p>\n “I put it on me,” he said. <\/span>“They did a better job coaching than we did\u2026[Our players] did what we told them to do, but I did a poor job. <\/span>[Maybe] I was too overwhelmed with the fact that we were here.”<\/p>\n The Saints are a young team, and Anderson certainly brings up a good point\u2014it’s remarkable that a team with this much talent coming back made it so deep in the playoffs, to the very last game being played in the Division 5 bracket. <\/span>Certainly they’ll be itching to wash the taste of this one out of their mouths, which saw Jordan Jackson scoring 11 and no other player notch more than 8. <\/span>The Saints trailed the whole game, as Pinewood started on a 5-0 run and led by seven after the first quarter, 12 at the half, and 20 after three quarters.<\/p>\n Pinewood deserves an enormous amount of credit, both for their pack-it-in gameplan and their nearly flawless execution. <\/span>They shot 45%, including 6-18 from the three, a high percentage especially given it was their first game in the arena. <\/span>“Typically, teams don’t shoot as well as they did in a new gym,” said Anderson. <\/span><\/p>\n “I thought we got great shots on every possession,” said Pinewood coach Doc Scheppler, whose team was also effective running the clock out in the fourth quarter, never taking a shot with double digits still on the shot clock. <\/span>Scheppler’s senior-laden team was in St. Anthony’s shoes last year, as a young, talented team who fell short in the state title game. <\/span>This year, they say that experience helped them. <\/span>“We were all a lot less nervous,” said senior Miranda Seto, who led her team with 17 points.<\/p>\n Hopefully St. Anthony can have a similar experience next season\u2014but it’s important as always to remember in these games that the Saints are already champions, having won the CIF-SS title and the CIF State SoCal Regional title. <\/span>“We’re very proud to be here,” said Anderson. <\/span>“We brought pride back to our school and to our part of Long Beach.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The unbelievable ride for this year’s St. Anthony’s girls’ team came to an end in the state championship against Pinewood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":16880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1632"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=1632"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}