On an Off Night, Buena Wins by 14 in Quarterfinals : High school basketball: Top-seeded Bulldog girls get halftime lecture, go through the motions and defeat Capistrano Valley, 51-37, in Division I-A playoff game.

The Buena High girls’ basketball team’s 51-37 beating of Capistrano Valley on Wednesday night was not a moral victory.

Rather, it was a victory with a moral.

Get better, or else.

“It was very hard to watch us play tonight, and very disheartening to me personally,” Bulldog Coach Joe Vaughan said. “We will have to play a lot better on Saturday.”

The Bulldogs (22-2) will face San Clemente, a 70-36 winner over Corona, Saturday in a Southern Section Division I-A semifinal. Buena is seeking its fifth consecutive championship-game appearance.

But if Vaughan and his team felt any satisfaction from their quarterfinal defeat of the Cougars (14-14) at Capistrano Valley, they kept it well concealed.

“We got yelled at at halftime, and after the game (Vaughan) said it was an embarrassing win,” Bulldog guard Eboni Conley said.

Do you agree with him?

“Yeah, I do,” she said. “It was one of our bad games.”

The Bulldogs, ranked fourth in the state and seeded first in their division, wear Wedgwood blue uniforms

with thick black trim that are, well rather ugly. In the first half, their performance matched their togs.

Senior center Michelle Giordano scored 14 of her 21 points in the first half, but Buena’s offense was sluggish and the team shot poorly.

Capistrano Valley kept nipping at the Bulldogs’ clunky black hightops and trailed by only 25-18 at halftime.

The Cougars’ twin sisters, senior forwards Katie (12 points) and Susan Scott (10), combined to score 13 points in the half.

But Buena’s depth and talent finally won out during a 14-2 run midway through the third quarter that put the game out of reach.

Still, the Bulldogs never quite got in synch. Even during a stretch when they stole the ball on three consecutive Cougar possessions, they missed two layups and came up with only a rebound basket.

“It scares me,” said Conley, who had 10 points and eight rebounds. “And I know it scares some of the other players on the team.”

But Giordano, a 6-foot-1 senior bound for Arizona, was not ready to sound the alarm.

“Coach isn’t happy at all,” she said. “But we’ll just play better, win again, and make him happy.”

So it goes for the defending champions.