Santa Cruz Warriors Watch Their Nine-Game Win Streak Come To An End

It’s been said that all good things must come to an end and unfortunately for the Santa Cruz Warriors they saw the D-League’s longest winning streak this season come to halt on Wednesday night.

Not even the psychedelic blue and gold uni's were enough for the Warriors to extend their nine-game winning streak and it was snapped after a 109-101 loss to the Idaho Stampede in front of a sold out crowd on Tie-Dye night in Santa Cruz.

Stefhon Hannah finished the game with a double-double and scored a team-high 19 points with 10 assists but it wasn’t enough to get past the sloppy play displayed on both sides of the ball all night long by the Warriors.

“It was a combination of not staying with our defense and a combination of turnovers,” said Warriors head coach Nate Bjorkgren. “You can’t turn it over against good teams and all the teams are good, they’ll make you pay.”

Santa Cruz had the lead for most of the game and they were able to open up a 10-2 run early in the fourth quarter to go up 86-77. But a total of 25 turnovers allowed the Stampede to stay in the game and they scored 34 points off of the Warriors mistakes.

“I thought the first quarter we were moving it and we were cutting it, our spacing was good,” said Bjorkgren. “And then from the second through the fourth quarter our spacing shrunk, we didn’t have as much quickness and speed on offense and it led to turnovers.”

Idaho went on top 97-95 after Justin Holiday made two free throws and it was their first lead since the first quarter. They extended the lead to five points after Durrell Summers hit a three-pointer and it looked like a done deal for the Stampede.

However, the Warriors still had a little fight in them and got within a point after a Jeremy Tyler dunk with 40 seconds left in the game it was a 102-101 game. Tyler finished the game with 15 points and 9 rebounds.

But the defense couldn’t come up with a stop and this time it was Idaho’s Coby Karl with the last laugh after he put the nail in the coffin with a late second jump shot in the fourth quarter to put his team up for good 104-101.

Justin Holiday — brother of Philadelphia 76ers’ Jrue Holiday — had another stellar game for the Stampede and scored a game-high 36 points with 4 three-point buckets. Karl finished with 16 points and 9 assists and Sean Evans racked up 19 points along with 14 rebounds.   

A win would have put the Warriors tied for first place with the Bakersfield Jam and Bjorkgren knows how big of a factor these blown opportunities are with only five games to go in the season, but also admits that the team still has to take it one game at a time.

“We know about it, we do. But this is a veteran group and they do a good job of playing for the now and playing for tonight,” he said. “Our total focus was just Idaho tonight, period. We know that we have to take care of ourselves before we can even think about the end of the year.”