Vista Murrieta pulls away from Paloma in second half

Paloma Valley guard Ashlee Medrano led all scorers with 25 points Tuesday night. (Photo by Action Captures Media Group)

By Paige Mendez, Correspondent

The Paloma Valley High girls basketball team lost its Tuesday night matchup against Vista Murrieta, 70-55. It was the second home game of the season, and from the beginning the Wildcats had their work cut out for them facing the 5-1 Broncos squad.

After a battle of a first half, Paloma (6-5) went into halftime trailing by just two at 27-25, thanks in large part to junior Ashlee Medrano putting up 13 points.

"Having a weapon like Ashlee is a luxury and a blessing," said head coach Gabriel Flores. "The difficult part is finding ways to keep her going when she's the essential part of our offense. Teams are going to throw heat on her … they're going to put two or three people on her and it's up to us, as a coaching staff, to practice that and to keep our offense going.”

Unfortunately for the Wildcats, Vista Murrieta’s swarming defense wore down Paloma Valley as the game went on. The heat was evident in the full-court press Vista Murrieta employed early in the game, which led Medrano to get creative in breaking a frequent double-team. As a starter who played every minute of the game, she had to figure it out on the court and was able to keep her team close.

The Broncos offense seemed to catch a new wind in the second half, however. Led by Alyson Pulsipher with 21 points on the night, they were more than 10 points ahead just three minutes into the third quarter.

"We gave them too many second-chance points and it allowed them to extend their lead a little bit more," said Flores.

Although Medrano kept her scoring total high with a game-high 25 points, the Wildcats never did recover from the deficit attributed to Vista's second-chance scores.

But it wasn’t for lack of trying on Paloma's part. Three players had more than 5 rebounds on the night, putting up several second-chance points of their own. The night’s leading rebounder was Gina Misiata with 9 boards.

“When you’re playing a team like [Vista], you have to have contributions from anyone who gets in the game, and that allowed us to stay in the game for quite some time,” said Flores. “In the end, we just didn’t have enough.”

Some of those contributors included Christianna Hawkins with 11 points and 7 rebounds and Olivia Castaneda with 5 points and 5 boards. Kyiara Igwe-kalu was limited to 3 points and 3 rebounds, seeing more of the bench than usual due to early foul trouble.

Vista had three other players scoring in double digits: Laisha Lazu, Makena Ching, and Alyson Boyd with 13, 14 and 11 points, respectively.

In spite of the loss, Flores said he still feels this team has a lot going for it. He looks forward to watching for the rest of the season and hopes fans will, too.

“Come check us out and support us,” Flores said. “We’ve got a good thing going with this program; they have fun and play well together.”

The next chance to see the Wildcats at home is their matchup with Lakeside on Jan. 10. In the meantime, they will go on the road to play against Temecula Valley Thursday at 6 p.m.

Madison Weaver launches an outside shot in the first half for Paloma Valley. (Action Captures Media Group)

 Christianna Hawkins drives to the basket against Vista Murrieta Tuesday night. (Photo by Action Captures Media Group)

 Olivia Castaneda gets open for an outside shot for Paloma Valley. (Photo by Action Captures Media Group)