NCS basketball: Cardinal Newman girls make history, win 1st section title in elite Open Division

With six seconds left in Saturday’s North Coast Section championship game, Cardinal Newman senior guard Kaida Angelo got a steal and headed down the floor.

In true basketball nature, she headed straight for the basket looking to score. But then Angelo pulled back and headed to the Newman bench, where her teammates were already out of their seats and ready to celebrate history.

For the first time ever, the Cardinals are the winners of the toughest NCS bracket, the Open Division.

It wasn’t easy, but the second-seeded Cardinals weathered a second-half storm by top-seeded San Ramon Valley to pull off the 61-55 upset at Dublin High School.

“I’m incredibly proud of the girls, and I’m really happy for our entire team,” Cardinal Newman head coach Monica Mertle said. “I’m especially happy for our seniors, that they had the opportunity to experience this. That’s one thing about our program — we embrace the Open Division. We want to compete at this level, and we’ve been trying for so long to finish it, and I’m so happy the girls were able to experience it.”

Newman was down 50-46 with just under five minutes to go before tying it up on free throws. The evenly matched teams then traded multiple buckets before Janelle Pena (13 points) scored four straight to put Newman in the lead, 58-55.

“Janelle does so much for us,” Mertle said, smiling after the victory. “Her versatility is amazing. There are games where she leads us in assists, games where she leads us in rebounding, games where she’s scoring; her ability to affect the game in different ways, it goes unnoticed a lot of the time, but she is a huge piece of our success.”

Brazilian superstar Taissa “Tissa” Quieroz then put the stamp on things for the Cardinals, with a put-back and a free throw with 15 seconds left to ensure there would be no Wolves comeback.

The victory ends a long wait for Newman to reach this particular mountaintop. Since the Open Division’s inception in 2020, the Cardinals have been the only team in the section to be part of it each year. They made the championship game once back in the inaugural year but hadn’t been back since. Until now.

“It feels amazing,” Angelo said of the win. “It’s been a long time. We’ve been wanting to beat this team and it feels great to beat them now.”

In front of a passionate crowd at Dublin High School, the Cardinals (28-2) got off to a fast start, hitting multiple three-pointers and holding the Wolves (28-2) to just six points in the first five minutes. Newman led 12-6 with three minutes remaining, and the teams finished the quarter with seven points apiece — but the frame ended with the Cardinals leading 19-13. Guard Kate Schat had 10 of those 19 points for Newman.

The second quarter saw a little sloppiness from the Cardinals on offense, which SRV capitalized on. They opened the second quarter on an 8-2 run to tie the game at 21. Avery Knapp hit a couple of huge threes for the Wolves during that span.

That forced Mertle to call a timeout, needing her squad to answer with a run of their own.

And they did.

Newman came out of the timeout with an 11-2 run, highlighted by two big threes from Leah Mauritson (nine points). Angelo also hit a three-pointer, and suddenly Newman was up 32-23. That’s where the score stood at halftime.

Yet the Wolves were the top seed for a reason, and they showed it after the break, going on a 14-5 run to open the third quarter. Newman was doing just enough to hold onto a one-point lead with 3:42 left in the third.

“We knew they weren’t going to quit; neither team was going to quit,” Mertle said. “We just don’t have that in our DNA. I think it was just a matter of putting ourselves in a position to win it at the end, and we did. We weathered their run, and we were able to make those plays in the last couple of minutes to win it.”

The Cardinals regained some breathing room with three-pointers by Mauritson and Schat (18 points) to make the score 43-38. The Wolves went on a 4-3 run the rest of the way, and even though Newman led 46-42 at the end of the third quarter, it was clearly a more positive frame for San Ramon Valley.

SRV continued the momentum into the fourth, scoring the first two buckets to tie it at 46. The Wolves scored the next two as well to take a 50-46 lead.

Along with Schat’s 18 points, Pena’s 13 and Mauritson’s nine, Quieroz finished the game with 15 points, nine rebounds and three blocks. Angelo added six points, five rebounds and five assists, and Leah Martinez collected eight rebounds.

Newman now awaits Sunday’s seeding for the NorCal regional playoff tournament, where the Cardinals are expected to compete in the top-level Open Division again. And it’s safe to say the Cardinals are confident in their squad going forward.

“We’re really confident — we just got to stick together and play together,” Pena said.

You can reach Staff Writer Kienan O’Doherty at 415-887-8650 or kienan.odoherty@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @kodoherty22.