Cerritos Valley Christian Steps Up for 55-42 Victory

Tell Tandee Taylor that she wouldn’t score until seven minutes remained in Tuesday’s game against Brethren Christian, and the Cerritos Valley Christian senior would have laughed. But she wouldn’t have admitted that her team would be in trouble.

And it wasn’t.

Taylor, a 6-foot-2 senior headed to UC Santa Barbara, was held to five points, but Valley Christian still pulled off a 55-42 Olympic League victory over visiting Brethren Christian.

With Taylor unable to score much against Cindy Oparah (seven points, eight rebounds), and with Pittsburgh-bound Monique Toney (13 points) on the bench in the second half with four fouls, Valley Christian was ripe to lose only its second league game in seven years.

Instead, a sophomore averaging six points turned back Brethren Christian’s hopes of an outright league title. Marcene Guererro scored 20 points--14 above her average--to give the Crusaders their 13-point victory.

“I wouldn’t believe it,” Taylor said of her late-scoring predicament. “But we had a lot of other players step up. If we play like a team, we’ll win as a team.”

And Valley Christian (17-2, 5-0 in league) won as a team, despite 26 turnovers.

Brethren Christian Coach Kim Harris said her team could win if it ran (it did) and finished its shots (it didn’t). The Warriors (16-3, 4-1) shot only 27%. Entering the third quarter trailing, 26-24, Brethren Christian made only three of 17 shots; in the fourth, trailing 35-31, the Warriors made four of 20.

In crunch time, the Warriors were more inexperienced than Valley Christian, which has been to the state finals the last five years. The score was tied at 33 with 4:18 left in the third quarter.

Then, Valley Christian’s mystique paid dividends.

“We hit a spot in the third quarter when we didn’t believe [victory] was going to happen,” Harris said. “The anxiousness from this game comes from [us] really being at this level and being able to take this game. . . . This was the game that was going to be a war that we could win. The finishing part was us facing ourselves.”

In the fourth quarter, holding a 35-31 lead, Valley Christian made six of 10 shots; Guererro scored eight, and Taylor added five.

Rachael MacDonald (16 points, 13 rebounds) and Natasha Saran (11 points) led Brethren Christian.