Navarette scores 10 fourth-quarter points to lead El Capitan over Los Banos

On a court full of underclassmen, Angelica Navarette showed how valuable a little veteran leadership can be Wednesday night.

The lone El Capitan senior took over an evening dedicated to her with a fourth quarter most only dream of closing their high school careers with. Navarrette scored 10 of her game-high 18 points in the fourth quarter, with nine coming in the final two-plus minutes of the game.

Her two free throws put the Gauchos up for good with 2:09 to play in a 40-31, season-ending victory over Los Banos.

“Usually I don’t like this kind of attention, but tonight I’m kind of happy with it,” said Navarrette, who had a long line of well-wishers waiting to congratulate her after the game. “I got a little embarrassed, but to end my high school career like that was pretty special.

“At the beginning of the year I missed a lot of free throws. I’ve worked on them a lot the last few weeks. Making them when the game was on the line was huge for me.”

Navarrette and company controlled the game through three quarters, entering the fourth with a 24-16 lead.

That’s when Los Banos (3-9 Western Athletic Conference) came to life. Danny Crosby’s squad upped its defensive pressure with full-court trapping. El Capitan (4-8 WAC) started turning the ball over and the Tigers got their offense going with transition buckets.

Griselda Angulo led the charge for Los Banos, scoring five of her six points during a 10-1 run to open the fourth quarter. An Angulo three-pointer gave the Tigers their first lead of the game, 26-25, with 5:40 to play.

“I think the biggest difference in the fourth quarter was we finally started running the stuff we’d been calling for all game,” Crosby said. “The girls didn’t seem to want shoot the ball through the first couple quarters. We kept running through the offense, but nobody was looking to take a shot and one pass too many led to a lot of turnovers.

“Having that senior leadership in those big situations makes a difference. We needed someone to step up and be able to slow things down when we needed it, but just don’t have that experience.”

The tw lead shifted back and forth over the next 3 1/2 minutes, with neither able to hold momentum.

Navarrette changed that in the last two-plus minutes.

She drilled a pair of free throws to make it 32-31 and then finished off a transition layup on EC’s next possession to make it a three-point game.

Crosby, who missed out on an earlier timeout because the referee said he didn’t hear him, received a technical for over-emphatically asking for a timeout with 36 seconds to play.

Navarrette stepped up and buried those free throws as well, which put the game away.

“Magical is the word I kept using,” Gauchos coach Michael Davenport said. “For (Navarrette) to get the opportunity to deliver in the clutch with those free throws in her final game, and then to hit that last shot. I probably would have liked for her to kick it back out and work some clock, but when it went in … magical.”

This story was originally published February 18, 2016 at 11:48 AM with the headline "Navarette scores 10 fourth-quarter points to lead El Capitan over Los Banos."