SCOTTS VALLEY >> Santa Cruz High coach Todd Trowbridge calls senior Nayla Samaha “the heartbeat” of his girls basketball team. On Thursday, she kept the Cardinals alive in the Central Coast Section Division IV playoffs.
Samaha scored 11 of her game-high 16 points in the fourth quarter, including two clutch free throws with 5.8 seconds left, as No. 9 Santa Cruz knocked out league rival and No. 8 seed Scotts Valley, 41-38, in their second-round game at Scotts Valley High.
“She’s phenomenal. She’s the heartbeat of our team,” Trowbridge said. “We wouldn’t have won the game without her.”
With the victory, the Cardinals (11-15) advance to play top-seeded Sacred Heart Prep (13-10) in the D-IV quarterfinals Saturday at Scotts Valley. The time has not been announced.
While playing the No. 1 seed is daunting, Santa Cruz will be happy to play a team it hasn’t seen in the past couple months. It played Scotts Valley (11-16) twice in Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League play, splitting the games.
“We’ve seen them already. We wanted someone new — we play better against teams we haven’t seen,” said first-year Scotts Valley coach Annabelle Balcazar. “But this is how it was drawn.”
The game had the feel of an old and heated rivalry, with plenty of physicality and back-and-forth scoring. After a very slow first quarter, in which neither team could find its touch, the Falcons were the first to take flight. They held a 13-11 advantage at halftime and stretched that into a 30-23 advantage at the end of the third quarter.
The game didn’t really get exciting until 4:26 remained in the fourth quarter, when Samaha turned a steal into a layup to tie the teams at 33-all. Scotts Valley fired right back with a 3-pointer from Megan Imai and a jumper by Lauren Shay to regain the lead.
The Falcons couldn’t shake the Cardinals, however, as they pulled back within a point on a Samaha layup and a put-back by Taylor Dunfield, who was fouled on the play, with 2:09 remaining. Morgan Larkin scored just four points on the night, but her two in the fourth quarter couldn’t have been more crucial for the Cardinals. She sunk a running jumper as the shot clock expired with 1:15 left to put Santa Cruz in the lead for good.
Dunfield then turned around and forced Scotts Valley into a turnover on its next possession, which Samaha recovered and turned into the two foul shots.
“That was super fun,” Samaha said. “I saw that hustle by (Dunfield) and that hustle wasn’t going to go unnoticed.”
Scotts Valley senior Kenedi Walters, who plans to play for Cabrillo College next year, nearly sunk her half-court shot to tie the game at the buzzer, but it bounced off the rim, giving Santa Cruz its first ticket to the quarterfinals in at least four years.
“It feels good,” Samaha said. “We’ve really come together.”
Dunfield, a junior, finished with 10 points, half of which were scored in the fourth, and senior Daniela Werlin-Martinez added seven for Santa Cruz.
Lahood and Ella Giguiere paced Scotts Valley with eight points apiece, and both scored all of them in the second half. Walters added seven points. The Falcons made five 3s as a team.
“I’m proud of these girls,” Balcazar said. “They’ve endured three different coaches in three seasons. It’s been an up-and-down season, but they’ve stuck with it.”
