Woodbridge Gets Floored : State championship: Sacramento El Camino halts Warriors’ title bid with a 71-38 victory in the Division II final.

In the aftermath, there was little that could be said.

Woodbridge senior Jamie Oenning, her shoulder resting on a wall, asked a reporter the final score.

He replied: “71-38.”

Oenning looked away.

“Phooh,” she said.

And that summed up Woodbridge’s first trip to the State Division II girls’ basketball championship game.

Sacramento El Camino (36-0), the senior-dominated Sac-Joaquin Section champion, looked right at home on the Oakland Coliseum Arena floor Friday and took the air right out of Woodbridge in a battle of the unbeaten teams.

It was the Eagles’ third game in the arena in eight days, and it might as well have been their home gym. They were not only looser than the Warriors--who started only one senior--but were quicker, scrappier, tougher and more focused. They dominated all but the game’s first five minutes.

“I think we were up for the challenge, but we just got beat by a better team,” said Woodbridge Coach Eric Bangs, whose team finishes the year at 32-1. “They got us every which way.”

Among them:

--Shooting. El Camino was 23 of 53 (43.4%); Woodbridge 16 of 66 (24.2%).

--Three-point shooting. El Camino was four of 13 (30.8%); Woodbridge one of 16 (6.3%).

--Free-throw shooting. El Camino was 21 of 35; Woodbridge five of 11.

--Rebounding. El Camino had 42; Woodbridge had 34.

--Turnovers. El Camino scored 18 points off Woodbridge’s 23 turnovers; Woodbridge scored 11 off El Camino’s 18 turnovers.

--Intimidation. El Camino’s Emily Hart, a 6-foot-3 stalk of bamboo, blocked six shots.

“Definitely, it affected us,” said Woodbridge sophomore guard Tami Weaver. “Usually Erin (Stovall) and (Oenning) are driving to the basket. Did you notice there wasn’t much of that going on?”

It was hard not to notice. Hart got a piece of everyone before the night was over. She not only played a major role on defense but also scored 13 points and had a game-high 15 rebounds.

But Hart was not alone in creating a fluster among Woodbridge players. El Camino’s pressing defense paid dividends in the third quarter when the Eagles blew the game open.

What had been an eight-point halftime deficit, 27-19, turned disastrous.

Angela Burgess (nine points, seven rebounds) cut the lead to 27-21 just 40 seconds into the half. Then came a 23-1 run by the Eagles, replete with three three-point baskets by three players and another three-point play. When Erin Stovall (seven points) scored with 42 seconds left in the quarter, giving Woodbridge 24 points, the Warriors also trailed by 24.

“In the third quarter we might have gotten a little impatient,” Bangs said. “We talked at halftime about chipping away, but . . .”

But Kristin Niemann (21 points) made a three-pointer, then came back with a three-point play and then, well, then there was no turning back the momentum that began late in the first quarter.

“Once it got rolling, the snowball kept getting bigger and bigger,” El Camino Coach Bill Baxter said. “We played very well. . . . We had some role players that stepped up.”

Among them were Christina Massetti and Kristina Barry, who limited Woodbridge’s Melanie Pearson to three points.

Pearson presented matchup problems for El Camino.

Oenning was the only Warrior to do any real damage. She had a team-high 15 points and nine rebounds, and a game-high six steals. She also committed only one turnover.

But after taking a 13-6 lead on Oenning’s three-point basket, Woodbridge missed 15 consecutive shots and committed eight turnovers before Oenning scored again; El Camino outscored the Warriors, 14-1, during the run.