Dos Pueblos Girls’ Basketball Completes Rare Sweep of Santa Barbara

Dos Pueblos Connected on Eight Three-Pointers in the Victory

#25 Lily Mires knocks down a jump shot over the defense of #4 Stella Borgioli. | Credit: Victor Bryant

Lily Mires scored 16 points and the Dos Pueblos girls’ basketball team completed a two-game sweep of rival Santa Barbara with a 58-41 victory on Tuesday night.

The two teams played twice in a three-day span with the Chargers defeating the Dons 62-50 on Saturday for their first win over Santa Barbara since 2017. The last time Dos Pueblos defeated Santa Barbara twice during league play was 2008.

“They’ve been better than everybody for years, and they’ve still got two of the best players in the league, so we’ll take whatever we can get against Santa Barbara,” said Dos Pueblos coach Phil Sherman. “It doesn’t happen often.”

The Chargers were once again lethal from three-point range as they knocked down eight shots from behind the arc led by Gianna Nichols, who converted three shots from distance and finished with 11 points.

“Gianna Nichols — we’ve been waiting on her the whole year. She puts so much pressure on herself, and I think she finally just said ‘forget it.’ She started playing really good defense, and now she’s making threes,” Sherman said. “In the summer, she was our leading scorer. She didn’t care. She has no fear. If she ever gets going, we’re going to be that much of a better team.”

Santa Barbara came out strong to start the game. After a Mires three-pointer opened the scoring, the Dons responded with a 13-0 run capped off by a basket inside by Adlen Godinez to take a 13-3 lead with 2:58 remaining in the first quarter.

“We had a great practice yesterday and we executed everything we wanted in the first quarter, and then Phil made some adjustments, and then you have to go to Plan B,” said Santa Barbara coach Andrew Butcher. “We haven’t mastered Plan B yet. That takes a little bit of reading the defense and whatnot.”

Santa Barbara’s dominance didn’t last long as Dos Pueblos evened the score at 13-13 on a free-throw-line jump shot by Mires with 1:25 remaining in the first quarter. The Chargers went on to take a 26-19 lead into halftime after a Mires three-pointer in the final minute of the second quarter.

Dos Pueblos began to solve Santa Barbara’s zone defense in the second half as Leila Chisholm poured in eight points in the third quarter. Chisholm scored 29 points and made seven three-pointers in Dos Pueblos’ win over Santa Barbara on Saturday and made her presence felt again with her third-quarter spurt.

A Nichols three-pointer midway through the fourth quarter gave Dos Pueblos its largest lead at 54-31.

Freshman Elle Stone was a bright spot for Santa Barbara as she served as the Dons’ point guard in the absence of senior Caia Trimble and finished with 16 points and 17 rebounds.

Dos Pueblos improved to 12-3 overall and 3-1 in the Channel League with the victory.

San Marcos, 53; Cabrillo, 36

Natasha Stapf led the way with a team-high 13 points as San Marcos (14-3, 4-0) remains undefeated in Channel League play.

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