By Wes Nakama
Closing out the regular season with a perfect 10-0 record, Kalani overcame its own imperfections Friday night to hold off feisty host Moanalua, 49-46, in exciting OIA Eastern Division girls basketball action.
A vocal Senior Night crowd of about 600 at Moanalua watched Falcons freshman guard Jordin Baker score a game-high 24 points and grab six rebounds to help Kalani earn the top seed and a first-round bye in next week’s league playoffs. Alofa Simanu and Serenity Tacgere each scored 12 points for Na Menehune, who fell to 8-2.
After Moanalua took a 44-41 lead on Kennedi Auelua’s layup with 3:22 remaining, Baker answered with three straight coast-to-coast layups — the last two after midcourt steals — over the next two minutes to put the Falcons ahead for good at 47-44. Na Menehune closed it to 47-46 on Dorian Pokipala’s layup with 1:19 left, but Peyton Frye sank a free throw 26 seconds later to make it 48-46.
On the next possession, Moanalua called timeout and then executed a well-designed play, but missed the layup and a putback and Kalani’s Kaliyah Kapahua-Kahele was fouled after grabbing the rebound. She sank one of two free throws with 16.8 seconds on the clock to make it 49-46, and Na Menehune missed their final 3-point attempt with three ticks on the clock and the Falcons were able to grab the rebound and run out the final seconds.
“I said if we just stay solid on the defensive end, and we try to run our offensive sets and actually run it correctly and make sure everybody’s in the right spots and cutting hard, that pretty much was it,” Falcons coach Tyler Tsukazaki said. “It wasn’t rocket science or anything, it was just shore up our defense, and then run what we’ve been running the entire season. We’re 10 games in already, so we should be pretty solid on that.”
After Kapahua-Kahele sank three 3-pointers to help give Kalani an early 9-3 lead, Moanalua finished the period with an 11-3 run and to go up, 14-11, and ended up taking a 26-21 lead into halftime. Na Menehune then led 32-23 early in the third period before the Falcons responded with a stunning 18-3 run led by Baker’s three layups, free throw and 3-pointer from the left wing. Her pick-6 capped the surge and put Kalani ahead, 41-33, with less than a minute gone by in the fourth.
“Mental errors, forcing shots early in the shot clock,” Moanalua coach Kirk Ronolo said, when asked what led to the huge swing. “Losing the possession, and then they score, and then do the same thing, turnover. And then mental toughness — when the girls got down, it took them awhile to get that spark back.”
Ronolo said Baker, who scored 30 points in the teams’ previous meeting on Dec. 29 and leads the OIA in average with 20.9 ppg, “is the real deal.”
“We’ll have to deal with her the next three years,” Ronolo said. “It was mental errors, not knowing how to set up to take a charge or defend that, and also not knowing where she is on the court to prevent that. But she’s a great player, she’s spectacular.”
In the teams’ first meeting Kalani sank 30 of 38 free throws, but the Falcons were held to just 7 of 13 from the line on Friday. After the big run finally ended with Kalani up, 41-33, Na Menehune post Serenity Tacgere scored seven straight points to lead an 11-0 charge capped by Auelua’s layup for the 44-41 edge with 3:22 remaining.
Tacgere, who scored 31 points in the teams first meeting, finished with a team-high 12 points along with Auelua
“We were scared when we got down (late), but we just knew that we had it in us to keep fighting,” Baker said. “And we got the win.”