The Redwood High girls basketball team has had its struggles against Marin Catholic in the past.

The Giants had dropped nine in a row to the Wildcats dating back to the 2019-2020 season.

This season has been quite a turnaround for Redwood, which claimed its first MCAL tournament title in five years with a 45-27 win over the No. 2 Wildcats on Saturday night at Terra Linda High.

Behind Brooke Denler’s 14-point, 16-rebound effort in the paint, the top-seeded Giants were able to avenge last year’s MCAL final loss to MC and complete a 3-0 season sweep of their Kentfield foes, denying them their bid for a fourth consecutive league playoff title.

“This year was a different sense that we can do this. We can get over the hump and we can beat Marin Catholic,” Redwood coach Zach Borrello said. “I think it helped when we (beat MC) in December. I think it helped when we did it on the road in January. Coming into this environment saying ‘Hey guys, we’ve done this twice already.’ Just telling the kids every day that they could beat them and we did it, which is awesome.”

The Giants (20-8) came out aggressive on both ends of the floor. They held MC (17-11) scoreless until Simone Claxton’s layup made it 9-2 with a minute and half gone in the second quarter.

“I’ve lost to them every single year,” said Molly Gallagher, who finished with five points and seven steals in the victory. “As a senior it’s really good to end on a good note. Our defense was fantastic all game long and we were able to convert on offense. We just locked down on defense (in the fourth quarter) and took care of the ball. That was our issue. We were able to find the open person and knock down the shots.”

Denler’s final points of her first half made it 20-6 with 2:40 left until halftime.

Behind buckets from Jocelyn Gigounas and Brooke Spagnuolo, MC cut it to 21-10 at intermission.

Like MC’s offensive struggles in the first quarter, Redwood had a hard time finding the hoop to start the third quarter. The Wildcats responded with a 7-0 run to cut the Giants’ lead to 21-18. Sienna Frazier, who led MC with 10 points, keyed the run with a basket to go with her 3-of-4 effort at the free-throw line.

Maya Saibel (nine points, two 3-pointers) and Ainsley Gallagher (five points) each delivered 3s in the final 1:15 of the third quarter to widen the gap to 27-19.

Saibel’s 3-pointer ended nearly an 8-minute scoring drought for Redwood, which closed out the game on an 18-8 run to clinch the pennant.

“We tried to get our feet under us,” MC coach Kayden Korst said of her team’s first-quarter struggles. “Redwood played tremendous defense the entire game. We weren’t aggressive. We didn’t play to score. Not everybody was looking to score every time they got the ball, so that hurt us.”

Kitty White, who picked up her fourth foul with two minutes left in the third quarter, had a key putback of Denler’s shot just as she returned to action with four minutes remaining in the game. She finished with eight points.

“It was really hard (sweeping MC),” said Denler, who also had three blocks. “We’ve been working all year for this ever since last year. We knew this was our year. We just showed up. We were focused and very well prepared by our coaches and that’s what made us win tonight.”

Both teams now await to see where they land in Sunday’s North Coast Section seeding meeting for next week’s tournament.

Borrello feels that his team should be getting one of the top four seeds in the Division I bracket, while Korst is hoping to get a top-five seed in D-II.

“It was tough. We stayed together as a team and played as hard as we could,” Gigounas said. “We should be proud of the way we’ve played and hold our heads high as we head into NCS. We’re still just as confident before this game. We just need to learn from this game and our past games and take that into NCS.”