Buena Stops Crescenta Valley

Maybe the Buena High School girls’ basketball team seemed vulnerable.

The Bulldogs, after all, were without senior standout guard Eboni Conley, who will miss the rest of the season with an injured left knee.

And they were coming off a poorly played game that they won only in the closing seconds, and only with a lot of luck.

No luck was involved in Buena’s 78-50 rout of Crescenta Valley in a Southern Section Division I-A semifinal game Saturday night at Ventura High.

Rather, the perennially powerful Bulldogs, ranked third in the state and ninth in the nation, needed only their trademark team effort to take them where they have gone many times before.

Junior center Nicole Greathouse led the Bulldogs with a game-high 24 points and 12 rebounds, and junior forward Stephanie Kinnear added 17 points and grabbed a team-high 14 rebounds to go with six assists, three blocked shots and two steals.

As a result of their efforts, and those of several others, second-seeded Buena (27-1) will face Mater Dei in the I-A championship game next weekend at the Pyramid in Long Beach. It will be the Bulldogs’ 12th appearance in a section final. Buena, which lost in last season’s title game, has won four section championships and two state titles in Coach Joe Vaughan’s 21-year tenure.

“This is what we wanted,” Kinnear said. “Everything really came together tonight. It was a really fun game to play.”

Not for third-seeded Crescenta Valley, which trailed throughout and was down by 12 points after the first five minutes and by as many as 30 points in the fourth quarter.

Greathouse and Kinnear were not the only ones to put the third-seeded Falcons (28-2) in such a deep hole.

Shooting for their first appearance in a final game since 1977, the Falcons were instead outshot badly by Buena early on and were done in completely by a three-point third quarter in which they made just one of 14 shots.

Already ahead at the half, 40-27, the Bulldogs opened the third quarter with a 14-0 run. They outscored Crescenta Valley, 16-3, in the quarter despite playing most of the period without Greathouse, who picked up her fourth foul.

Kinnear stepped up with six points, five rebounds and two assists in the period. In addition, reserve forward Ashley Jackson scored four of her eight points and had two of her four assists.

Sophomore guard Renae Hofmann, who took over Conley’s spot, had 15 points and six rebounds.

Crescenta Valley standout Michelle Greco finished with 16 points.