Cerritos girls basketball holds off Cantwell Sacred Heart to advance to Division 3AA title game

CERRITOS — There are nine red CIF Southern Section championship banners for various sports, with blue lettering and the years listed in white, that hang in the Cerritos High School basketball gymnasium.

Senior center Onyekachi Nwanze and the girls basketball team will have a chance to add a 10th banner — and the program’s first — next week.

Nwanze turned in a dominant performance Saturday, collecting 39 points and 23 rebounds, and Cerritos withstood a furious fourth-quarter rally from Cantwell Sacred Heart to hold on for a 70-67 victory in a CIF-SS Division 3AA semifinal playoff game.

“She’s the heart of the team,” Cerritos coach Marcus Chinen said of Nwanze, who also had two assists, two steals and two blocks. “This year, she took it upon herself to put the team on her shoulders.”

The Dons (23-9) will face Oak Park (19-7) in the championship game next Friday or Saturday. It is Cerritos’ first CIF-SS title berth since losing the Division 3AA title to La Salle in 2022.

“(A championship) would mean a lot to the school, to the community and, especially, to the girls,” Chinen said. “They’re the ones that are on the court, they’re the ones that are playing. For them to put us on this pedestal, especially the coaching staff, not very many coaches can say that they were able to go to the finals — yet alone win one. That’s our goal and hopefully, eventually, we win one. We have a chance now and hopefully next week it will fall our way.”

Nwanze, who had a double-double before halftime, is looking to finish the job this time around.

“It shows how hard our coaches worked, how hard we worked,” Nwanze, the team’s third option two seasons ago, said. “Honestly, this team is probably one of the best teams I’ve played with, so I’m hoping that we can close it out this time.”

Cantwell Sacred Heart (20-12) trailed by as many as 16 in the third quarter and 67-55 with 2:44 to play in the fourth.

The Dons had trouble taking care of the ball, with six turnovers in the quarter, and the Cardinals stormed back with a 12-2 run capped by a Leilannie Chavez corner 3-pointer in front of her team’s bench with 9.2 seconds to play.

“We got a little loose,” Chinen said of the final eight minutes. “We just kind of played not to lose rather than to win. We kept telling them throughout the year…don’t just try to protect the lead, you want to try to either maintain or extend it.”

Cerritos forward Ambar Multani split a pair of free throws to push the lead to 70-67 with 6.1 seconds left.

On the game’s final possession, Cantwell Sacred Heart’s Layla Navarro, who scored 14 of her 18 points in the second half, dribbled up the left side and misfired off the left side of the rim on a running, potential game-tying 3-point attempt.

“(Navarro) had a pretty good look, I wish it was a little more on-balance,” Cardinals coach Leonard Dominguez said.

“We were looking to get in the paint and then maybe pitch out to a corner to see if we could get a good look. Unfortunately, we didn’t have that much time and our senior decided to take it on her own.”

Andrea Padilla chipped in 14 points and Chavez added 10 for Cantwell Sacred Heart, which missed five of its 14 free throws in the fourth quarter.

Still, Dominguez said he was proud of the valiant comeback and is looking forward to the CIF State playoffs. Brackets will be revealed Feb. 25.

“The biggest thing was our defensive pressure,” Dominguez said. “We were resilient on defense in the fourth quarter. We tried to limit them to one shot and pressure the ball as best we could. I think it rattled (Cerritos) a little bit. I wish we would have did it for four quarters.”

After a quiet opening quarter, Nwanze scored all but one of Cerritos’ eight made shots from the field in the second to give the Dons a narrow 31-30 halftime lead.

“It’s not just about me,” Nwanze said. “It’s how much (my teammates) dish in those passes. They work hard to get it to me and we’re like a family.

“I just had to turn it on because it’s the semifinals. We might not have had another game so I had to play with my heart.”

In the third, Multani complemented Nwanze’s dominance as the duo owned the paint and scored 25 of Cerritos’ 27 points in the quarter.

Nwanze dominated on a series of layups, jump hooks and post moves, while Multani helped clean up the offensive glass for easy baskets en route to 10 of her 17 points.

“That was huge for us,” Chinen said of Multani’s production. “I don’t know what it was but she just turned it around in that third quarter. She was finding (Nwanze) and (Nwanze) was finding her. It was pretty great.”

Cerritos took a 58-48 lead into the fourth.

“(Nwanze) is the best post player we’ve seen all year,” Dominguez said. “This post player was something special (Saturday night). We haven’t been dominated by a big like that since maybe a year ago.”