Irvine Valley rallies past Vaqueros in opener, 59-53

Irvine Valley went on a 12-0 run to take its first lead in the fourth quarter on Saturday and went on to defeat SBCC 59-53 in the women's basketball season opener at IVC.

The Vaqueros started the season in blazing fashion, taking a 9-0 lead on a 3-pointer by Stella Dulay and two more from Alyssa Cosio. SBCC led 15-8 after the first quarter and 29-25 at the half.

Destinee King, a first-team All-State selection last year, had 14 points and 16 rebounds for the Vaqueros. Dulay hit 3-7 from long range and scored 11 points while Cosio had 10. Jocelin Petatan had seven points and eight rebounds off the bench and Jada Clark added seven rebounds.

"We played awesome and we played hard," said 13th-year head coach Sandrine Krul. "We outrebounded them 49-37 but we had too many turnovers (28). It was an intense first game, we just didn't hit shots in the fourth quarter and missed some defensive assignments."

The Vaqueros enjoyed their biggest lead of 14 points when Morgan Giove drained a triple to make it 23-9 with 7:24 to go in the second quarter. King made two layups to give the Vaqueros a 48-42 advantage with 8:09 remaining in the game but the Lasers responded with their 12-0 run and took a 54-48 lead on a layup by Kydell Pearson with 4:19 to play.

Irvine Valley outshot the Vaqueros 40 to 33.3 percent. Serena Saba led the Lasers with 15 points, six assists and six steals.

The Vaqueros travel to Santa Monica on Wednesday for a 6 p.m. game.