Tritons Rout Mater Dei to Reach Final

Second-ranked San Clemente’s 55-36 victory over fifth-ranked Mater Dei in the Marina girls’ basketball tournament semifinals was notable for two reasons.

One, it broke a 12-game losing streak to the Monarchs, a South Coast League rival. Two, San Clemente (13-1) played the kind of defense that enabled it to go more than seven minutes without a field goal and hardly notice.

“Defense was our main goal tonight,” said San Clemente forward Colleen Turnbull, who scored 19 points and grabbed 12 rebounds. “That’s what we focused on. If we didn’t score for seven minutes, obviously, you can see that.”

Mater Dei (7-6) trailed by only nine points after one quarter, yet was lucky to be down by so little. San Clemente jumped to a 12-0 lead--eight by Turnbull--but didn’t score the final 3 minutes 30 seconds of the quarter.

The Tritons went 7:04 without a field goal as Mater Dei pulled to 14-8, but Turnbull answered with two baskets inside, spurring a 26-9 run.

“When my team gets focused and decides to play good defense--when I saw the way we started, I knew we would be fine,” San Clemente Coach Mary Mulligan said. “[Mater Dei] just couldn’t get anything going. They rely on the fastbreak and we took that away from them.”

Turnbull, Taryn Commins (four steals) and Andrea Jacobs were especially effective inside. No Mater Dei player scored more than six points. Kelley Kruger (three steals) scored 10 and Debby Caine (six rebounds, two steals) scored nine for San Clemente.

The Tritons, ranked 10th in the state last week, play the No. 1 team, Harbor City Narbonne, in tonight’s championship game at 8 at Marina. Narbonne is ranked 10th nationally, and avenged its only loss with a 49-31 victory over Vista Rancho Buena Vista, which is ranked fourth in the state.

“We’ll run with them,” Mulligan said of tonight’s title game. “We’ll play them straight up. It means nothing to us in terms of our goals. This game [against a league opponent] was the one that was important.”

In Marina tournament consolation games:

No. 6 Marina 78, Fountain Valley 40--Natalie Nakase (nine points) had 12 assists for the second consecutive game and Chanda McLeod had 18 points and 10 rebounds for Marina (11-3).

Long Beach Wilson 61, No. 7 El Dorado 44--Stephanie Patten had 20 points for the Hawks (9-3), who trailed by one at halftime.

No. 9 Edison 42, Santa Margarita 38--Edison (13-1) trailed by one going into the fourth quarter. The Chargers got 14 points from Christina Patterson and 11 from Trisha Grady. Venessa Ferragamo scored 14 and Kate Toman 13 for the Eagles (8-5).

Century 62, Rosary 54--Aprile Powell scored 31 points for Century (8-4).

In the Garden Grove tournament:

Los Alamitos 51, Sunny Hills 34--Kristin Geoffroy scored 34 points, grabbed nine rebounds and blocked seven shots for Los Alamitos. The Griffins (8-5) led by 14 at halftime.

In the Laguna Beach tournament:

Dana Hills 41, Mission Viejo 26--Jeri Howard scored 17 points for Dana Hills (8-5), which advanced to play Irvine at 6:30 p.m. in today’s final.