<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
Poly fans are excited that they’re in the CIF Finals, but as the team is making their eighth consecutive appearance, it would be easy to understand those fans taking a third consecutive CIF title for granted—those fans probably haven’t had a chance to take in the Cajon Cowgirls this season. <\/span>Cajon is 29-2, have won their CIF playoff games by an average of 34 points each—their last contest, a semifinal game against a quality opponent in Perris, was played with a running clock. <\/span>How have the Cowgirls been successful, and what can Poly do to counteract their strengths? <\/span>We’re breaking that down for you this week, starting with today’s article focusing on Cajon’s bigs.<\/p>\n And by bigs, we mean big, as in singular: the Cowgirls’ inside game begins and ends with Darshae Burnside (#24), an incredibly athletic 6’3″ center who’s averaging 18 points and 15 rebounds per-game. <\/span>We got a chance to see Burnside and the rest of her teammates in the Cowgirls’ second-round defeat of the Wilson Bruins, and there’s no doubt that Burnside is impressive. <\/span>She can run the floor, she shoots well from the mid and long-range (she was 3\/3 from beyond the arc against the Bruins), and has a natural nose for rebounding. <\/span><\/p>\n Of course, Poly has several advantages that most teams facing Cajon haven’t—first, with Monique Oliver in the middle, they have a player who can face Burnside one-on-one, which should allow Poly’s guards to defend the perimeter better without having to crash inside to help on defense. <\/span>Second—Cajon’s only 6′-plus threat is Burnside, while the Jackrabbits have Oliver, Thaddesia Southall, TaNitra Byrd, and Sheila Boykin, to boot. <\/span>If any two of those players has an “on” game, Poly should be able to continue to exploit points from the paint, which were key to their last two wins. <\/span>Oliver is a great physical player, and her battles with Burnside should be fun to watch—if Southall can continue to grow as a defender (she’s certainly developed as a shot-blocker), and be able to bang in the middle with Burnside, that Poly Wall should be awfully hard to scale.<\/p>\n There are a few other keys to containing Cajon’s inside game—first, Wilson’s Byron Ferguson bracketed Burnside with two players, neither as tall as her. <\/span>The physical approach worked for much of the first half, as Burnside was frustrated and turned the ball over several times—in the second half, as Wilson tried to shoot their way back into the game, Burnside got more space to herself, which led to a 25 points\/22 rebound performance. <\/span>She also didn’t shoot well from the line (she’s about a 60% shooter on the season). <\/span>The stats show that Burnside can also be foul prone—she’s finished over a third of Cajon’s games with three fouls or more. <\/span>Because she’s her team’s most effective post player, if Poly can get those fouls notched on her early they could build a cushion in the waning minutes of the first half.<\/p>\n The last two games Poly has been mismatched inside, with their opponents having a small, shooting-oriented roster. <\/span>Cajon has those miniature sharpshooters as well (we’ll talk more about them in tomorrow’s breakdown of the Cowgirl backcourt), but this game could very well be won or lost, at least defensively, on how well they can disrupt Burnside. <\/span>Much of the Cowgirl offense runs through her, and while it’s safe to say Poly isn’t used to seeing the quality of big they’ll face in Burnside…well, it’s probably safe to say Burnside’s not used to seeing the quality of inside players she’ll face in the Jackrabbits.<\/p>\n Stay tuned over the next three days as we break down the rest of Friday’s matchups, along with plenty of other girls’ basketball coverage as we tick down the hours till the final.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wondering what to look for in this Friday’s CIF championship? 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