Get ready for the understatement of the year.
“Our team, pretty much, when we’re up, it’s pretty hard to stop us,” Mater Dei guard Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis said. “When we feel the momentum going our way it’s pretty hard to stop us.”
There was not one ounce of cockiness in Mosqueda-Lewis’ voice when she said that. It’s just a fact. The Mater Dei girls basketball team is a force.
The Monarchs played the toughest schedule in the nation. And they only had one loss in the regular season. More on that later.
Mater Dei did that despite losing three key players. Alexyz Vaioletama, a member of the under-16 U.S. national team, missed the entire season with shin injuries. The Monarchs lost Lauren Rock to a season-ending knee injury before the playoffs started, and Taylor Spears transferred to arch-rival Brea Olinda.
That’s enough to decimate most teams, but most teams don’t have a player as talented and skilled as Mosqueda-Lewis roaming the hardwood.
Mosqueda-Lewis was the Gatorade state player of the year as a sophomore and this season she led the Monarchs to a second consecutive CIF-SS Division 2A championship and a berth in the CIF Division 2 state title game against Carondelet of Concord on Friday at 6 p.m. at Rabobank Arena in Bakersfield.
For all her accomplishments this season, Mosqueda-Lewis has been selected The Register’s 2009-10 girls basketball player of the year.
Mosqueda-Lewis was named the tournament MVP after leading the Monarchs to the Nike Tournament of Champions title in the elite division in Chandler, Ariz. She came up big for the Monarchs when they upset St. Mary’s of Stockton, which was ranked No. 1 in the nation at the time, in the tournament finals.
Mosqueda-Lewis, who shot 58 percent from the field and 52.6 percent from 3-point range for the season, was the tournament MVP after leading Mater Dei to the Nike Interstate Shootout title in Oregon.
Mosqueda-Lewis, who averaged 23.9 points, 8 rebounds and 2.3 assists, was named the Trinity League MVP after the Monarchs went undefeated in league. Santa Margarita (Division 3A champion), Orange Lutheran (Division 4AA semifinalist) and JSerra (Division 4A quarterfinalist) from the Trinity League all went deep into the postseason, but Mater Dei beat its league opposition by an average of 37.9 points per game.
There was only one team that had Mater Dei’s number the past two seasons: Brea Olinda. The Ladycats defeated Mater Dei in the CIF Southern California Division 2 regional finals last season and again this season in the Tony Matson Memorial Classic on Jan. 18. Both times Mater Dei went in ranked as the No. 1 team in the nation.
“I think every time we came out to play Brea it was never an intimidation in our minds when we saw the name Brea next to us having to playing them again,” Mosqueda-Lewis said.
Whatever it was Brea Olinda had Mater Dei’s number. But the Monarchs finally got the Brea Olinda monkey off their backs with a 51-46 victory over the Ladycats in the Division 2 regional finals on Saturday at USC’s Galen Center.
“To finally knock them off, obviously, feels good to us,” Mosqueda-Lewis said. “We feel like we worked really hard to get to where we are now. Obviously, like Coach (Kevin) Kiernan said, we are a way different team than we were earlier in the season and even last year. We’ve just come to realize that we need to come together and play as a team if we want to defeat a team like Brea. They have so many great individuals, but they are a greater force together. We realized that and we practiced to make that work against them.
“Like Coach Kiernan said, we played the toughest schedule in the country this year. We played St. Mary’s and we played tough and we were mentally tough and we beat them. We played a lot of other great teams this season. I don’t think Brea is a step below any of those teams, but at the same time I don’t think our team is below any of those teams also.”
