Valencia girls basketball routs Castaic

CASTAIC — Valencia girls basketball continued their winning ways Friday night with an 81-19 rout of Castaic. The No. 3-ranked team in the Daily News area, Valencia, improved to 3-0 to open Foothill League play and 7-1 overall on the season with the win.

Valencia has now won all three of their Foothill League games by over 40 points after beating Hart by 49 on Dec. 5 and No. 8 Saugus by 41 on Dec. 9.

“I thought we did a good job, we came out and tried to play to our standards,” Valencia coach Jared Honig said. “We like to play really aggressive on defense and overall I thought it was a great effort on both sides of the ball.”

Valencia sophomore guard Kamilla Basyrova had 14 points, seven rebounds, five steals and five assists in the game. All of Basyrova’s points came in the first half.

“I think we played amazing, I just think sharing the ball as a team is the key,” Basyrova said. “Our team’s mindset is to just keep building and working and get better from here.”

Valencia senior and 2025 Foothill League co-player of the year Cara McKell scored 14 points and had four steals and four rebounds, with all of her points coming in the first half as well. Freshman guard Sophia Sarkar had 15 points, four assists and four steals for the Vikings.

“It was a great team win, we all contributed,” McKell said. “We like to play fast and I think we did a great job of getting in the passing lanes tonight and finishing the play.”

Valencia had a great defensive performance in the game, not allowing Castaic to score more than seven points in a quarter and also only holding them to three points in the fourth quarter, which had a running clock.

“I thought our team played really well tonight. We were very talkative and there was a lot of teamwork on both sides of the ball.” Sarkar said.

Five players on Valencia had multiple steals, with Basyrova leading the team with five. The Vikings scored a large number of points in transition thanks to their aggressive defense.

“We were getting in the passing lanes and did a good job getting deflections and steals,” Honig said. “We came out, we were prepared and just tried to execute our game plan to the highest level.”

Maddie Ivey had 12 points on four 3-point shots off the bench for Valencia. Valencia forward Keira McLaughlin had 10 points, two steals and two blocks. Alexis Epie had 12 points and two steals for the Vikings. Harmony Winslow had ten points for Castaic (3-7, 0-4) and did a nice job drawing several Valencia fouls in the game.

Valencia’s next game is on Dec.12 against Palm Desert. Castaic will look to bounce back at Taft on Dec. 18.