Palmdale’s Defeat Makes Little Sense

The Palmdale High girls’ basketball team lost to top-seeded Peninsula, 36-34, Saturday in the Southern Section Division I-AA championship game.

Wait until the Falcons get the statistics. Wait until they see the film. They won’t believe it.

Very little made sense about Palmdale’s close defeat before 1,500 at the Pyramid.

The Falcons will be shaking their heads for years.

Unseeded Palmdale (28-3) knew it had an excellent chance if it could stop the Panthers’ three-point shooting.

Peninsula (30-1) made only seven of 23 three-point attempts. In fact, the Panthers shot no better than 25.5% from anywhere on the floor.

Palmdale shot 41.2%, out-rebounded Peninsula, 35-25, and held the Panthers scoreless for the final 5 minutes 43 seconds. Peninsula scored only two points in the fourth quarter.

But the Falcons led only twice in the first half and, after cutting a 10-point deficit with an 8-0 run in the fourth quarter, blew their final chance to at least send the game into overtime when guard Casey Bledsoe’s pass to center Kristi Rose was stolen by Eden Palacio with 1.3 seconds left.

“I don’t know what the problem was,” Rose said. “Maybe we all didn’t have the attitude to kick butt.”

Rose, a 6-foot-4 senior bound for Utah, was three inches taller than Peninsula’s tallest player and expected to have a big game. She led Palmdale with 14 points but had only four rebounds.

“That really surprises me,” Palmdale Coach George Corisis said. “Four rebounds.”

Three Palmdale players had more rebounds than Rose, including Bledsoe, a 5-7 junior, who led the team with eight.

The key to Palmdale’s demise was 17 turnovers, 10 of them on bad passes, nine of which were failed attempts to get the ball to Rose in the low post.

Peninsula Coach Wendell Yoshida, knowing his team had to stop Rose, had the Panthers clog the lanes. Palmdale’s guards couldn’t penetrate and were forced to make short, awkward passes.

“We didn’t have enough patience to reverse the ball two or three times, like Peninsula did,” Corisis said.

Forward Monique Nolan, who scored on a layup and a jump shot as Palmdale rallied from a 36-26 deficit early in the fourth quarter, had eight points.

But when Palmdale had possession with 13 seconds left, Peninsula put up a wall that Nolan and Bledsoe couldn’t penetrate. Bledsoe finally made a desperate pass to Rose with two seconds left.

“I was posted up,” Rose said, “but I think there were two people on me, maybe three.”

Palacio stole it, and Rose fouled Palacio immediately.

* BASKETBALL SCORES: CXX