After Bonita sophomore Nikki Wheatley scored 26 points to lead the Bearcats to a 51-39 victory over Diamond Ranch, I get a text from Aram saying she might be the best guard he ever covered. Last year she was the best freshman I’ve ever seen.
By Aram Tolegian, Staff Writer
It may have been only the first game of Hacienda League play, but the Bonita High School girls basketball team took a giant step toward winning a second straight league title on Wednesday night. The Bearcats rallied from a slow start, thanks to another huge outing from sophomore guard Nikki Wheatley, to beat host Diamond Ranch, 51-39, in a battle of the Tribune’s top two ranked teams.
“It’s one game and we have to come back next Wednesday against West Covina because they’re going to be shooting for us,” Bonita coach Darren Baumunk said. “We played a tough schedule in preseason knowing that we were going to get Diamond Ranch first.
“I think it’s a lot of pressure off of our girls to understand that we can still do it. We lost a lot of girls from last year. I think we’re still a very good basketball team. I think we can do just as good as last year, if not do more. We just have to believe.”
Duplicating last year’s 30-win season will be difficult, but with Wheatley one of few holdovers from that team, anything might be possible.
Wheatley single-handedly brought the Bearcats back from a 12-2 deficit after the first quarter. In fact, Bonita was stuck on two points until just under six minutes to play in the second quarter. That’s when Wheatley got busy.
It started with getting to the free-throw line, then morphed into Wheatley coming up with steals and layups to get her team to within 18-14 at halftime. Wheatley had more points (11) in the second quarter than the entire Diamond Ranch team.
Bonita’s run, though, coincided with Diamond Ranch standout Erika Williams going down with a knee injury. Williams left the game in the first quarter and tried to return early in the second. But less than a minute after returning to the game, Williams was laying on the court in pain. She did not return.
“We had to adjust our game plan a little bit, but I still thought we’d be all right,” Diamond Ranch coach Mike James said. “We just stopped scoring and started watching them instead of playing our game. We let Wheatley get going and she kept them in the game.
“We had a good game plan against her (Wheatley) and in the first quarter it was working to a T. But Erika going down, that’s 20 points we don’t get and probably another 10 points that they get. But there’s a reason why they’re the No. 1 team in their division. The good thing is that we can still come back and be co-league champs.”
Bonita got contributions from more than just Wheatley in the third quarter and assumed control of the game going into the fourth. A 3-pointer by Ariana Abo and two jumpers by Erin Hastings helped Bonita go ahead 29-20.
Wheatley closed the third period by getting a basket and a foul with five seconds left, and then stealing the ball and banking in a jumper as time expired to put the Bearcats ahead 34-22 going into the fourth. Wheatley finished with a game-high 26 points.
“I was just thinking we needed to pick it up offensively and I felt that as the game started going we started adjusting and putting points up,” Wheatley said.
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