STATE HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : Revenge Is Sweet for Knight Girls : Division II: Bishop Montgomery fails to score in final 3:56, but holds off Alemany, 45-44.

This chapter had a happy ending for the Bishop Montgomery High girls’ basketball team. But don’t close the book on the Knights just yet.

Bishop Montgomery won the Southern California Division II Regional championship by defeating Mission League rival Alemany, 45-44, before 1,200 at Cal State Dominguez Hills Saturday afternoon. The Knights will play Moreau (30-2) for the state title on Friday at 6:15 p.m. at Arco Arena in Sacramento.

In the teams’ third meeting last weekend, league champion Alemany beat Bishop Montgomery to win the Southern Section II-A title.

Saturday’s win eased the sting of that defeat.

“We beat them first, they beat us twice in a row and we came back to finish the chapter,” Bishop Montgomery Coach Cedric Hurt said. “We wanted to win league and Alemany got that. Then we wanted to win CIF and Alemany got that too. We just wanted our piece of the pie.”

Bishop Montgomery (25-7) fell behind early, rebounded to take a commanding lead, then survived a furious Alemany rally.

The Knights led, 45-38, with 3 minutes 56 seconds left, but they failed to score again as the Indians clawed back.

After cutting the lead to 45-44 and missing three opportunities to go ahead, Alemany (27-5) had one more chance with 19 seconds left.

The Indians worked the ball to freshman guard Samantha Rigley, who missed a wide-open shot from 10 feet with a second remaining. Bishop Montgomery guard Natalie Graham grabbed the rebound to secure the victory.

“The key was we ran our offense and were more patient than they were,” said Bishop Montgomery center Keisa Smith, who finished with a game-high 18 points. “Especially at the end. They looked confused and looked like they didn’t know who they wanted to take the last shot.”

Alemany Coach Melissa Melton agreed.

“Defensively, we couldn’t have played a better game,” she said. “But we never got into our offense. We couldn’t get the ball inside, our wing people weren’t penetrating and we never got our running game going.”

Rigley made four three-point shots against the Knights in the Southern Section championship game, so on Saturday Hurt extended the zone defense to deny her that shot.

“We were basically just focusing on finding a weak spot,” Hurt said. “She hit those big shots against us in the last game so we just brought the zone out a little farther to meet the wings. That’s about the only adjustment we made.”

Bishop Montgomery missed its first five shots from the field and trailed, 9-1, midway through the first quarter. Alemany’s man-to-man defense stifled the Knight fast break, but more importantly led to foul trouble for senior forward Nicole Haynes, the team’s leading scorer in a semifinal victory over Gahr.

After picking up her third foul with 4:21 to play in the first quarter, Hurt replaced Haynes with senior Joana Ziuraitis.

But instead of falling further behind, Bishop Montgomery responded and took a lead it would not relinquish.

Graham sparked a 13-0 run with two baskets, two free throws and an assist on a three-point play by Smith. When Ziuraitis made two free throws a minute into the second quarter, Bishop Montgomery led, 14-9.

Alemany, which went scoreless for six minutes, battled to within three points before the Knights closed out the half with an 8-3 run. Smith scored four points in the run and Graham made a jump shot at the buzzer to give Bishop Montgomery a 26-19 halftime lead.

“We came out flat and laid-back a little at the beginning,” said Smith, who also had nine rebounds. “But as soon as we fell behind, 9-1, we just kind of looked at each other and picked up the intensity. They didn’t think we’d be able to come back and I think they relaxed a little.”

Ziuraitis, who started several games in place of Haynes this season, had four points and five rebounds.

“Joana’s a senior and has played a lot this year so she knew what she had to do,” Knight starting guard Mirlen Martinez said. “She came in, stepped up and did the job.”

Smith and Graham each scored as the Knights built a 10-point third-quarter advantage, then held off another Alemany run to lead, 39-32, at the end of the quarter.

Martinez scored her first basket to give Bishop Montgomery a nine-point lead with seven minutes to play. Alemany cut the lead to three, but Smith and reserve Shelley Dungo scored to boost the Knight lead to 45-38 with 3:56 remaining.

Free throws from Rigley and Zevette Mitchell and Kelly McKay’s three-point play pulled Alemany to within a point. But that is where the rally ended.

“We just really played with a lot heart today,” said Graham, who scored 14 points, including 12 in the first half. “We just wanted this game so bad.”

In advancing to the state championship game, the seventh-seeded Knights defeated the second, third and fourth-seeded teams.