Rosary Frustrates, Beats San Diego University by 27

Rosary played a half-court game for the first six minutes of its Southern California Division III girls’ basketball playoff game Tuesday against University of San Diego High.

The Royals built an 18-point lead after pressuring University into nine backcourt turnovers in its first 14 possessions, then after a brief lapse they pulled away in the third quarter for a 72-45 victory at Rosary.

“We were on fire in the first quarter, and then the second quarter we just stopped for some reason. We don’t know what happened,” said Romina Bollini, the only senior on the team. “I think our confidence started boosting up a little too much.”

Rosary, which will play Inglewood Morningside in the semifinals Thursday, built a 22-4 lead on Jenise Karcher’s jumper with 2 minutes 8 seconds remaining in the first quarter.

The Royals (23-8) extended their lead to 21 points midway through the second quarter, but University trailed by only 12 at the half. University (21-10) then scored the first five points of the third quarter to cut the lead to 38-31 with 5:23 remaining.

The Royals then went inside to Bollini on five consecutive possessions, and Bollini converted on all five attempts to put Rosary back up by 14 points.

“We got fired up again,” Bollini said. “We pretended it was 0-0 and we started all over again.”

Maggie Barnett, who scored 23 points to lead the Royals, made a three-pointer and Gayle Sonoda followed with a driving layup to cap a 19-3 run and give Rosary a 23-point lead entering the final quarter.

“The main goal for this game was defense,” said Bollini, who scored 21 points. “We wanted to hold this team down and we wanted to work on our plays.”

University was led by Caroline Jensen with 20 points.