Sports
Lady Vikings Upset Long Beach Poly
Balthazar's free throw lifts the Samohi girls basketball team to a 57-56 victory.
Having already announced that he will not be back next year, girls basketball is in no hurry to see the season end. Turns out, neither is his team.
On Wednesday night, the Vikings pulled off the biggest upset of the 1AA playoffs so far, stunning No. 2-seeded Long Beach Poly 57-56 in the quarterfinals and avenging a 65-48 loss to the Jackrabbits in January.
Bianka Balthazar led Santa Monica with 18 points (including three three-pointers). She made the second of two free throws with under one second remaining, giving her team the lead for good. Moriah Faulk had 15 points, Kristina Johnson had 10, Briana Harris had eight and Kalaria Obasi added four for the Vikings (22-8), who won the Division 1A title last winter.
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Defending champion Poly (25-3), which entered the game ranked as high as No. 2 in the nation by several polls, trailed by one point at halftime despite strong play by Sheila Boykin, who finished with a game-high 19 points.
The seventh-seeded Vikings advance to the semifinals for a rematch with third-seeded Santa Ana Mater Dei (27-1), which raced to a 20-6 first-quarter lead on its way to beating Santa Monica 70-54 in a nonleague meeting Jan. 4. The Monarchs routed Etiwanda 71-49 in the quarterfinals for their 19th consecutive win.
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Santa Monica and Mater Dei will tip off at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the Anaheim Convention Center. The other semifinal pits Brea Olinda against Canyon Springs.
Meanwhile, in boys soccer, the top-seeded Vikings avoided being upset and kept their championship dreams alive on the road Wednesday afternoon with a gutsy 6-5 shootout victory over unseeded La Puente in the second round of the CIF Southern Section Division 4 playoffs.
The teams were tied 1-1 through regulation so the game had to be decided on penalty kicks. Santa Monica (17-0-2) advances to the quarterfinals where it will take on Hesperia Oak Hills (21-2-3) on Friday at 3 p.m. The Bulldogs defeated Godinez 3-1 in the second round.