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Thanks to their size and physicality in the paint, a lot of people forget that Poly could be a three-point shooting team, if they wanted to; with the talent of Brittany Wilson (and her injured sister Ashley), and Ariya Crook-Williams, and the support of Tajanae Winston, it’s a skill very much in Poly’s repertoire. <\/span>The Rabbits certainly aren’t looking to go away from the reliability of grinding post play\u2014but they proved that they can when they need to, shooting their way out of a jam and going 7-15 from beyond the arc in the SoCal Regional against Clovis West, winning 68-53 to send them to Bakersfield next Saturday for a shot at history.<\/p>\nClovis played admirably\u2014in particular, Long Beach State signee Janae Coffee kept working hard all game\u2014but when Poly can hit shots on the outside to break up a defense, it’s hard to keep up with them. <\/span>“Well Poly is Poly,” said Clovis coach Craig Campbell. <\/span>“We knew we could play very well and still fall short.” <\/span>The Rabbits’ defense (which Campbell called a college-style level of pressure) produced 26 turnovers, and 28 points off those opportunities; the Rabbits had 14 team steals. <\/span>Hard work on the inside led to a 19-11 lead at the end of the first quarter, as Ta’Nitra Byrd put in great work off the bench, scoring 8 of her 13. The next thirteen minutes, into the second half, was a long march for the Eagles as they came back into the game, ultimately tying it up at 33 with 5:20 left in the third quarter. <\/span>Poly coach Carl Buggs called a timeout, to give his team a rest and to let them re-focus. <\/span>When they came out of the break, they were a whole new team, raining threes and stretching out the Eagles defense. <\/span>Crook-Williams hit three three’s in the next four minutes, and Olivia Montgomery added another. <\/span> “Them making those shots opened things up for us in the middle,” said Sheila Boykin after the game, as the Eagles had to overextend their defense to defend out to the perimeter. <\/span>Boykin scored four points in the third, and another six in the fourth; Thaddesia Southall and Byrd, two more post players for Poly, combined for another seven points in that stretch, as Poly kept bringing the Eagles out and then banging it inside. “They wore us down,” said Campbell. <\/span>It’s nearly impossible to defend\u2014when a team shoots that well on the perimeter, and still scores 30+ points in the paint with the height advantage Poly has, you’re not left with a lot of options. <\/span>“You don’t want to start the game shooting on the outside,” said Buggs. <\/span>“It can really slow you down. <\/span>But when they fall, it makes things a lot easier.” After that 33-33 tie, Poly went on a 6-0 run, and closed the quarter on a 16-5 run. <\/span>In the fourth the fatigue for the Eagles started to show, particularly for Coffee, who had just two of her 14 in the final period. <\/span>“It was just their strength on every single play,” she said. <\/span>“Boxing out, rebounding. <\/span>I’m used to playing maybe one girl like that, not two on every play.” <\/span>Clovis’ leading scorer, Brianna Orlich, had 16 to back up Coffee’s 14. <\/span> Buggs emphasized after the game that the shift in offense to the perimeter wasn’t planned, but in the flow of the game, saying Crook-Williams is always authorized to shoot when she’s open. <\/span>Poly enjoyed a healthy rebound advantage, 40-28, and got 19 points on second-chance plays thanks to 25 offensive boards. Leaders for the team were Crook-Williams, with 16 points, Byrd, with 13 points and seven boards, and Boykin, who had 14 points, seven boards, and five steals. <\/span> When a journalist asked the panel of Poly players after the game if winning got old, Brittany Wilson (who had five points and three assists while wearing her sister’s jersey on Saturday) scoffed. <\/span>“Since I was a freshman, we’ve always had an All-American, and all that. <\/span>But it’s seemed like every year we won the state title, our ranking slipped further and further down. <\/span>This year we started ranked no. 24, and we had no All-American\u2014we want to show that we don’t need any of that to be this good.” They’ll get a chance to prove they don’t need any of that in order to be the best basketball team in state history next weekend, when they try to become the first team ever to win five straight state titles in Bakersfield, against Oak Ridge. <\/span>This week we’ll have features, detailed previews, and even a guide of what to do in Bakersfield before the game, so be sure to come back early and often! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A fifteen-point win over Clovis in a well-played SoCal Regional means that Poly will head to Bakersfield next Saturday, with history on the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":16891,"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-1721","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\/1721","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=1721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1721"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=1721"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}