DIVISION II : Troy Scores Fashionable Victory Over Canyon, 46-30

Troy’s girls thought their coach, Brad Sand, was a sloppy dresser, so they bought him a tie and insisted he wear it. They went for the Daffy Duck basketball motif, and he wore it for the Warriors’ first Freeway League game in January.

That was 12 victories ago.

Now known as “the lucky tie,” Sand was dressed for success Wednesday night, and Troy turned Canyon daffy in the fourth quarter of a 46-30 second-round Southern Section Division II-A playoff victory, running its winning streak to a school-record 13.

The Warriors (20-5) are moving on to the quarterfinals for the second consecutive year after having never been this deep in the playoffs. They’ll face second-seeded Cypress Saturday.

Their victory over the Comanches (15-10) was ugly at best, but even Mr. Blackwell would appreciate a victory in which a girl named Bloomingdale sparked the Warriors.

Troy led after each quarter, 10-7, 21-18 and 28-27. But it was an 18-foot shot by Stephanie Bloomingdale with 5 minutes 50 seconds left that seemed to get the Warriors going. Her basket with one second left on the shot clock--she had attempted only one field to that point--began a 7-0 run in which Troy stretched its lead from 32-28 to 39-28.

“She’s our shooting guard, and when that happened, it seemed like things started going for us,” Sand said.

It was part of a quarter in which Troy outscored Canyon, 18-3. The Comanches were zero of 12 shooting and their youth showed. They started three juniors and two sophomores, and as their season ticked away, it was apparent no one wanted to take the open three-point shots that might bring them back.

“I think it was just our inexperience,” first-year Canyon Coach Nelson Herrera said. “We missed a lot of easy shots and we had a hard time dealing with pressure.”

Audra Gamst led Troy with 13 points, and Jennie Gadd had 10 points and 13 rebounds--seven points and 11 rebounds in the second half. Dinah Shah was six of six from the line in the fourth quarter and finished with 11 points.

“The girl in the middle (6-foot-3 Gadd) was tough to match up with,” Herrera said, “but the difference was the point guard (Shah). She passed well and broke our defense.”

Sophomore Sarah Spjut and junior Robynn Kuhlmann each scored nine points for Canyon.

Kuhlmann, their leading scorer, didn’t play the first quarter but Spjut picked up the slack with seven first-quarter points.

The Warriors would clearly like to put the Canyon victory behind them and play Cypress the way it played Compton Dominguez in the first round. Despite their underdog role in that game--Dominguez was the third-place team from a tough league--the Warriors played four strong quarters. Against Canyon, they were sharp only in the fourth.

“Every coach I talked to said, ‘I can’t believe you got Dominguez; they’re big, fast, aggressive and they run you all night long,’ ” Sand said. “I’ll take that game over this game. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but today it just wasn’t getting done.”

In another Division II-A game:

Mission Hills Alemany 61, Valencia 30--Carly Funicello, with 20 points, and Samantha Rigley, with 18 points, helped top-seeded Alemany roll over Valencia (13-10). Sandy Sarmiento had nine points for the Tigers. Alemany is 25-0.