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Lady Dragons crushed by champ Casa in SCL tourney opener, await NCS D3 seeding

After their letdown, regular-season finale loss dropped them into a fourth-place Sonoma County League finish, Sonoma Valley High School’s varsity basketball girls needed a major regrouping and had to bring their “A” game to Petaluma for Wednesday’s SCL Tournament opening-round battle with top-seeded Casa Grande.

In their two previous meetings, the Lady Dragons turned in strong first-half efforts and had leads over undefeated regular-season champion Casa Grande, before being outplayed in the third-quarter and eventually losing.

Unfortunately for fourth-seeded Sonoma, that wouldn’t be the case this time.

The Gaucho girls – recently ranked 10th in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Chronicle – galloped out to as 20-7 first-quarter lead, pushed it to a 40-16 halftime advantage on the strength of five of their 11 treys made in the game, then coasted to a 70-36 victory.

While top-seed Casa Grande moves on to tomorrow night’s, Saturday, Feb. 18, SCL tourney title game against third-seed Analy, the Lady Dragons will wait and see where they’ll be seeded for next week’s North Coast Section championships.

Though the Sonoma girls’ overall record is only 12-15, they’ve been recently ranked eighth in NCS Division-3, which puts them on the bubble to host a first-round sectional game.

Comprising the postseason Lady Dragons – directed by head coach Sil Coccia and assistant coaches Steve Semenero and Dino Minatta – are seniors Annie Studdert, Jersey Witous, Ari Schill, Karly Burningham, Anna Stewart, Lindsey Stewart and Emily Edwards; juniors Ashley Vail, Kendall Ashe, Ali Romano, Caroline Knef and Halli Dobson; and, brought up from the junior varsity, sophomore Samantha Richards and freshman Mackenzie Albrecht.

Against Casa, the Sonoma girls were paced by Studdert’s double-double of 17 points and 11 rebounds to go with three assists; Lindsey Stewart’s seven points; Schill’s four points and four rebounds; Albrecht’s four rebounds, three points and one block in her first five minutes of varsity play; Vail’s four rebounds; Witous’ three rebounds and two steals; Anna Stewart’s two points; Ashe’s two assists; and Burningham’s and Romano’s one point each.