Castro Valley High Girls Rally to Beat Hayward High at Buzzer

The Castro Valley High girls basketball team came into its HAAL game with Hayward High on roll Wednesday evening, but with two minutes to go the Trojans appeared headed for defeat.

Then everything went so right for Castro Valley and so wrong for Hayward.

With time winding down, junior Jazel Talauta swished a 3-pointer as time ran out to cap a wild 49-48 comeback victory.

With Castro Valley’s star player, Elena Ala, being triple-teamed, she was forced to pass the ball and Taluata was there to receive it on the other side of the key.

“I thought there was more time left, like about 11 seconds,” Talauta said. But she had the wherewithal to shoot and make it.

The unlikely comeback gave Castro Valley its eighth straight win. It also improved to 5-1 in the Hayward Athletic League and 11-4 overall while handing the upstart Farmers (12-4, 6-1 HAAL) their first league loss.

Ala led all scorers with 21 points, drilling numerous threes, and Talauta’s winning shot gave her 12 points. Hayward’s 6-foot post player, Angela Reid, led the visitors with 15 points and Nakia Leopold added 11.

Quiana Wilson, Hayward’s first-year coach who has sparked a turnaround, was disappointed with how her girls handled a few stressful moments down the stretch, but as far as the winning shot was concerned, she said, “The girl made a great shot. I think we had a hand in her face. I couldn’t take that away from her. That was a clutch shot.”

Only Talauta didn’t realize how do or die it was, how little time there was.

Wilson said, “There were a couple of situations there where we lost our head and didn’t make smart decisions.”

Trojans coach Jim Lemmon acknowledged that it crossed his mind a couple of times in the fourth quarter that a victory might not be in the cards, as when his team was down by 10 and then eight, 44-36, with less than two minutes left.

“We got on this good roll with good man-to-man defense, but tonight we seemed a step behind and a lot of that was because of them (Hayward).

“Then in the last two minutes, we had to have them miss some shots, and we had to make a basket every possession pretty much.”

A 3-pointer by Ala made it 46-41 with 1:11 left to give Castro Valley some hope. But it was still that score with a little over 20 seconds left when a Hayward player stepped on the sideline against the Trojans press. Then Ala hit her last 3 with 17.7 seconds left to make it 46-44, and Castro Valley used its last timeout.

In the next 6.5 seconds, two Hayward players, Leopold and Brandi Gardere, each made only one of their two free throws, and in between Gardere fouled Michelle Mayamoto in the backcourt, and Mayamoto made her two free throws.

When the Trojans got the ball the final time with 11.2 seconds to go, they had no timeouts left and the girls had to come up with their own play.

“We work on that play all the time in practice,” said Ala, who was MVP of the Newark Memorial holiday tournament. “We all know what to do.”

Ala, and her teammates, passed the test Wednesday night.

In the boys game, Castro Valley defeated Hayward High, 66-53. The Trojans are now 12-4 overall and 4-2 in league play.