Panthers' season ends in Irvine

IRVINE — It took about one hour and 15 minutes of constant, suffocating defense and – just like that – Porterville’s loud season came to a quiet ending in Irvine, Tuesday night.

The Panthers girls’ basketball squad, which finished with a formidable 28-3 record, no matter how you spin it, ran smack into a worthy opponent – South Section champions Woodbridge (28-3) – and fell in a low-scoring affair, 38-20.

There were few tears this time, and much less drama than the late-game collapse on Saturday against Roosevelt — a loss that most Panthers would agree was the hardest to swallow all year.

But this one? Many of the Panthers felt they were simply grateful for the chance to represent Porterville amongst the big guns of the CIF Division III state playoffs.

“You just have to look at it like we played so hard this whole season, and this game would be great to win,” said Panthers wing Kyla Hill, who led the team with eight points, “but… they were amazing. I don’t think we were too upset after this game.”

The Panthers looked uncharacteristically turnover-prone in the first quarter, getting the whistle for just about every call in the manual from traveling to palming to passing the ball to the wrong jersey.

But the Warriors ran into a tough Panthers defense of their own, missing easy layups and forcing bad passes into the post.

Porterville forward Alex Shew finally got the girls on the board five minutes into the game with a pair of free throws. 

But it was certainly a testing period for both teams as the score at the end of the first quarter would indicate: 6-2 Woodbridge.

“They were tough and physical and played really close defense,” Hill said. “They were touching and bodying up on us the whole game and we weren’t used to that.”

The Warriors tried something new in the second with a full-court trap that gave the Panthers fits until Cori Ann Snyder broke another three-minute scoring drought with two free throws followed by a layup driving the right baseline.

Hill sank two more freebies with 1:30 remaining in the half to keep within a respectable distance of 16-8. But in that final stretch, the Warriors controlled the ball the entire way with five straight offensive rebounds and six missed shots. 

Perhaps the story of the game wasn’t in the effort of each squad; instead it came down to the old adage that size does matter. The Panthers were outsized at every position except point guard.

“They were big,” Porterville coach Brian Hill said. “We had a hard time getting into our sets. No one was passing and we thought we’d just dribble around. They frustrated us.”

Though it looked as if the Panthers would make a spirited run right out of the locker room when Hill nailed a 3-pointer from the left corner to make it 16-11, the Warriors took over with a 13-3 run to end all hopes of a comeback.

Hill hit another trey just before the close of the third quarter, but Woodbridge star Ashley Ward answered right back with a long-range bomb of her own 15 seconds later. Ward finished with a game-high 16 points while guarding Shew and holding the Panthers’ leading scorer to just three points.

“They play teams like us all the time and they were able to adjust,” coach Hill said. “We had a harder time adjusting to them.

“We only gave up 38, which I thought, defensively, we were really good tonight,” he added.

The Panthers held the Warriors to their third-lowest outing of the season, but Woodbridge held Porterville to its lowest total by 14 points. The next lowest was 34 in the season’s first loss against Tulare Western.

With little more than a minute left of the game and the Warriors holding an irrefutable 36-18 lead, both coaches withdrew their starters. Noel Garcia, Shew and Stevee Thomas all walked off the floor for the last time of their careers.

“We played hard and gave it our all,” Panthers point guard Thomas said. “It wasn’t a great way to go out, but someone had to lose.”