Atwater High girls finish undefeated run to a fourth straight CCC basketball championship
The Atwater High girls basketball team celebrated another Central California Conference championship by cutting down the nets in the gym on Tuesday night.
It’s becoming an annual tradition as they have put together four consecutive conference championships.
Tuesday’s 72-47 victory over El Capitan put the finishing touches on a perfect 12-0 run through the CCC this season. The Falcons (22-6 overall) have now 45-1 in their last 46 CCC games.
“I feel like we’re peaking at the right time,” said Atwater coach JR Davis. “It’s exciting because we are so young. This team still has a lot of head of them. This is a very special group.”
There wasn’t much suspense for the Falcons to lock up the undefeated championship as they jumped out to a 27-12 lead in the first quarter against the Gauchos (7-5 CCC, 19-8 overall).
Atwater then opened the second quarter with a 16-0 run to open up a 43-12 lead with 3:46 left in the first half.
“We’ve worked really hard for this,” said Andrea Sandoval, who scored 15 points. “We wake up for 6 a.m. practice every Saturday morning. We hope to go further than last year. We wanted to win CCC and we hope to do well in the playoffs.”
Karissa Hukill added 15 points for Atwater and center Cami Gibson scored 14 points and dominated the boards inside. Madi Hiler added 10 points off the bench for the Falcons.
The players felt they didn’t feel pressure to keep the streak of CCC championships going.
“I feel our coaches really push us to do better, but they make it fun,” Sandoval said. “It’s not like we feel stress or pressure to continue the streak.”
Avnoor Bains led the Gauchos with 16 points, including four 3-pointers. Shantelle Magana added 13 points.
Both teams now will prepare for the playoffs with the postseason matchups being released on Saturday by the Sac-Joaquin Section.
After winning all 12 CCC games by an average margin of victory over 44 points, the Falcons must now gear up to face tougher competition in the playoffs.
“Our preseason schedule was pretty tough,” Davis said. “We knew our league would be easier so we wanted to see some good competition. In all six of our losses we were competitive. Nobody blew us out.”
