Shimoda’s Hot Second Half Helps Mater Dei Prevail

Everything seemed to be going well for the third-ranked Mater Dei girls’ basketball team in a nonleague game Tuesday night against No. 5 Foothill, except when it was time to put the ball in the basket.

Monarch point guard Maile Shimoda, disturbed at the offensive drought, decided to change things. So she started shooting. And scoring.

Shimoda scored 14 of her 16 points in the second half, turning a one-point halftime lead into a 52-45 Monarch victory.

“We weren’t scoring in the third quarter,” Shimoda said. “So I just started shooting. [Foothill] played a zone most of the game and in the second half they started slacking off to play the middle more. It opened me up on the outside.”

Shimoda, who scored 14 of the final 21 Monarch points, took over with about two minutes left in the third quarter.

She drove the lane for a layup, made an eight-foot jump shot and a 15-footer to end the third quarter, then opened the fourth with a three-pointer that gave Mater Dei (13-2) a 40-34 lead.

Foothill, on consecutive three-pointers by Kristen Mann, tied it at 40-40 with 6:04 to play, but the Knights (8-6) went cold, making only one field goal the rest of the way.

Still the Knights were within two, 44-42, after two Mann free throws with 2:20 to play, but Shimoda hit a 12-foot jump shot, then grabbed a rebound and went end to end for a layup and a 48-42 Monarch lead with 1:15 to play.

“She’s a great pressure player,” Mater Dei Coach Ollie Martin said of Shimoda. “She can do a lot of different things when the pressure is on.”

Foothill’s Chavaughn Brown returned to the lineup after missing the last meeting between the teams, a 61-39 Mater Dei victory Dec. 29 in the Orange County Championship semifinals. Brown missed that tournament with an injured foot.

She was a force early, but clearly fatigued toward the end of her first appearance in nearly two weeks. She finished with 15 points, none in the fourth quarter, on six-of-21 shooting--2-9 in the second half.

Mann finished with 19 points for Foothill, which shot 17-54 (31%) from the field. Kyra Melville had 16 for Mater Dei, which shot 20-47 (43%).