SAN JOSE — It has been 3,647 days since Archbishop Mitty girls basketball lost a game in West Catholic Athletic League play.
That 10-year streak reached 100 consecutive wins on Friday against St. Ignatius. Tuesday, the Monarchs were back home in San Jose for senior night to welcome in Archbishop Riordan.
The Crusaders had played Mitty tougher than any other WCAL team this season, losing 56-42 in San Francisco on Jan. 21. And after a half, Riordan only trailed 30-22.
Then Mitty showcased why it hasn’t lost a WCAL matchup in a decade. The Monarchs exploded out of the halftime break, mounting a 21-0 run to blitz past Riordan.
The Crusaders couldn’t stop the oncoming onslaught, and Mitty controlled the rest of the contest to cruise to a 71-50 win.
“Coach (Sue) Phillips is a phenomenal coach,” said Riordan coach Will Watkins. “She made an adjustment, and we didn’t adjust well enough to it. So that’s pretty much the biggest thing. We’ve got to be able to make better decisions there against the pressure.”
Riordan (15-7, 6-4 WCAL) handled Mitty’s full-court press well enough in the first half after an 8-0 start that gave Mitty an early lead. But the Monarchs (19-3, 10-0) turned up the heat in the third quarter and caused the Crusaders to turn the ball over in bunches.
“I didn’t think we were playing with a level of intensity or ball pressure that we needed to to beat a team like Riordan,” Phillips said of her Mitty squad. “So we picked up the defensive pressure and changed up our schemes a little bit and turned them over. Made some difficult shots. We also got out in transition, which was big. Shot the ball at a higher clip as well.”
Mitty pressured Riordan constantly, and the Crusaders started to give way midway through the third. After scoring on their second possession of the quarter, Riordan then faced down a nearly nine-minute scoring drought while the Monarchs took advantage of several steals to get easy buckets in transition.
“We got handfuls of stops in a row, so that was great,” Phillips said. “Unfortunately (in the first half), it looked like more of a containment press than speeding somebody up for us. So we started to do that and really made them stretch their offense, extend their passes, try to enter their offense further away from the basket and make them take contested shots. So that did the job.”
On the sideline, Watkins was imploring his team to be aggressive and take the fight to Mitty. It’s a daunting task in any circumstance against a team of such quality, but especially when the Monarchs have the fresh confidence of 100 straight victories at their back.
“They’re just going to keep coming,” Watkins said. “They’re a good team. We’ve got to watch the film and get better. Honestly, it’s confidence, right? We don’t concentrate on the fact that they’ve won 101. This group for Mitty has won 10 in a row in the league. That’s the way we look at it.
“It has nothing to do with the last nine years. We’re 0-2 against this team.”
For now, Riordan hopes to improve enough to face Mitty one more time in the playoffs. But as Tuesday night showed, the Crusaders – and the rest of the WCAL – still have a ways to go to catch the league’s unquestioned standard-bearer.
“This time of year, it’s going to be about runs,” Phillips said. “So the key is being able to go on runs of your own and capitalize on those turnovers, but then also to weather some of those storms. I thought at times, we played a little hurried unnecessarily offensively. Didn’t take advantage of some mismatches in transition. But we did a much better job in the second half.”
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