Playmates before teammates

Mar 17, 2023

Camille Malagar (left) and Gabbi San Diego go way back.

By Gordon Mann
D3hoops.com

The NCAA Division III women’s basketball tournament only started 14 days ago, but it might seem like a lifetime ago for the Christopher Newport women’s basketball team.

For the second season in a row, the Captains entered the Tournament on March 3^rd with a perfect record, the No. 1 ranking in the country, and a long list of lopsided victories. CNU led the nation in scoring margin (33.6 points) and the margin would have been even larger if the Captains didn’t limit their starters’ minutes.

The Christopher Newport team that entered this month won with its trademark Captains Chaos defense, a full-court press that rapidly converts opponents’ turnovers into easy baskets. It won with a deep rotation in which 10 players played at least 15 minutes but none more than 22. And it won with two of the best players in Division III women’s basketball, preseason All-Americans Sondra Fan and Anaya Simmons.

In the span of just 14 days, the Captains have had to chart a different course to the 2023 national semifinals. First, CNU lost Anaya Simmons to a leg injury in its Tournament opening 89-52 win over Brooklyn. Then, Christopher Newport lost starting forward Katy Rader who was injured in the sectional semifinals against Wartburg.

Losing two-fifths of the starting lineup in the span of three games goes beyond the truism that injuries effect every team this deep into the season. Losing Simmons, who leads Division III in field goal percentage and has fabulous footwork around the rim, is especially painful.

But the Captains have been able to adapt, survive and advance, largely thanks to two small guards who were playmates before they were teammates.

Camille Malagar and Gabbi San Diego have known each other longer than they could possibly remember.

Their fathers, Max Malagar and Robert San Diego, immigrated together to the Unites States from the Phillipines after high school in 1987. The families settled about an hour from each other – the San Diegos in Northern Virginia and the Malagars in Southern Maryland – but the families’ friendship has remained strong through vacations, weekend visits, and basketball games.

“Since we were growing up, we were hanging out every weekend, ever since we were little babies, and there’s a ton of pictures of us,” Gabbi explained, while her father proudly displayed one of those photos on his phone.

“My family would travel almost an hour every weekend, just to hang out with [the San Diegos],” Camille recalls.

Before coming to Christopher Newport, Malagar and San Diego had similar high school careers on opposite sides of the Maryland-Virginia border.

Malagar had individual and team success at Howard High School in Elkridge (Md.), where she was a team captain for three seasons, all of which ended with a regional championship. The last regional championship came with an undefeated record, which has turned out to be good practice for playing at CNU.

Further south, San Diego put together a similarly impressive record at South County High School. She too was a three-time team captain. She was Player of the Year in her District as a sophomore and scored over 1,200 points in her career.

As close as their families were, Camille and Gabbi were not a package deal in the recruiting process. Malagar found her way to CNU first and decided to join the Captains before Gabbi had visited the Newport News campus.

“We were together at a family get-together, and we were talking about recruiting because we both played basketball throughout high school,” Gabbi recalls. “I was talking about how I was going on a visit to CNU, and [Camille] talked about how she had been offered by CNU. I went on a visit and I loved it, just like she told me I would. She had a couple other schools to visit and then she ended up committing after that.”

Both players saw action in the COVID-shortened season in which CNU played a handful of exhibition games. Their sophomore seasons looked very different. San Diego jumped right into the lineup for head coach Bill Broderick, started almost every game at point guard, led the team in assists and logged the second-most minutes as the Captains reached the 2022 Sweet 16. Malagar missed the season due to injury.

Over the course of this season, they’ve come together again as the Captains’ starting backcourt. San Diego has been a mainstay in the starting lineup. Malagar started the season on the bench, entered the starting lineup in January, went back to playing as reserve in February, and then returned to the starting lineup after Simmons’ injury.

Each one brings something different to a Captains team that must replace the 21 points and 10 rebounds a game that Simmons and Rader provided.

Malagar is a little undersized at guard and very undersized if you consider that she’s replacing Simmons in the starting lineup. But she has a silky-smooth jumper and strong basketball IQ to put herself in position to make shots. As Gabbi says of her backcourt mate, “she’s a bucket. If you need a bucket, she’s definitely someone to call a play for if you need a bucket.”

Plus, you can’t play for Broderick unless you can play defense, run, and play defense while running.

Those skills were on display in the Captains’ 60-51 win over No. 24 Wartburg in the Sweet 16. Malagar celebrated her birthday by scoring 12 points, grabbing eight rebounds, and hitting shots that kept the Knights at arm’s length. That equaled her career high for scoring and set a new one for rebounding.

“Best birthday present ever,” she said with a smile in the postgame press conference.


Camille Malagar has stepped into a bigger role offensively due to the Captains' injuries. Photo by Steve LaBonte, d3photography.com

“With so many injuries already, other people have just go to step up and play,” Broderick observed after the Wartburg win. “And I think the other thing is so often, so many people just focus on trying to shut down Sondra Fan, Anaya Simmons, Hannah Kaloi. When they’re doing that, we have other people that can step up and get it done.”

On Saturday night, it was San Diego’s time to step up.

The guard whom Broderick called “our little 5-foot-1 floor general” poured in 32 points in 31 minutes – a total which she called not just a season high but a “life high” – and hit 12 of 13 free throws to ice the Captains’ win over the Jumbos. San Diego posted six assists to one turnover against the stingy Tufts defense. Most impressively, she did all that in front of a raucous crowd in a gym where very few visiting teams win in March.

In sport where size is an advantage, San Diego uses her lack of it to frustrate defenses. When she crouches down and prepares to dribble up the court, defenders awkwardly bend at the waist to meet her at eye level. Even those who might be able to match her in a footrace have no chance when they’re hunched over and back peddling.


Photo by Steve LaBonte, d3photography.com

And you can’t stop what you can’t see.

At one point in Saturday’s win, San Diego crouched low to the ground, dribbled the ball inside the arc, and crossed paths with Malagar who was running toward the top of the key. It was effective dribble hand off, so two Tufts players followed Malagar.

Except it wasn’t.

In the basketball equivalent of baseball’s hidden ball trick, she crouched even lower to the ground, somehow maintained her dribble, and jetted past the two confused defenders to the rim for two.

Asked whether being five-foot-one can sometimes be an advantage on the basketball court, San Diego says it’s not a big deal anymore.

“I’ve been the smallest in the group my entire life. I kind of knew that wasn’t going to change,” she says with a chuckle, referring to her family’s height. “My mentality has been how can I control everything else. Taking everything else seriously, being stronger and faster, and working on my pull-up and my floater and finishing at the rim.”

When Camille is asked what it’s like to play with Gabbi, she said, “It’s been awesome. It’s just been so full circle just because we started playing together, and now we’re playing our last few years together.”

This weekend Malagar and San Diego will join Sondra Fan, versatile big Hannah Kaloi, and rapidly emerging post Hannah Ortloff in the Captains’ starting lineup when undefeated and top ranked CNU faces unranked Rhode Island College. The David versus Goliath analogy would be easy, except Goliath’s starting backcourt has an average height under five-and-a-half feet.

On the court, you’ll still find elements of Captains team that entered the NCAA Tournament with a 25-0 record. They will likely press, even off their own missed shots. They will try to generate points off a trapping defense that really is chaos for opposing ball handlers once they pick up their dribble and are marooned in the backcourt.

But the Captains do not rely on that style to win.

“It’s definitely a ‘next woman up’ mentality. [The injuries] change maybe a little bit the plays we can run, and what we do there. It changes a little bit of what presses we can use,” Broderick said. “My heart breaks for [Simmons and Rader] because they’re amazing seniors who’ve worked so hard. But it’s part of sports and we just got to keep moving on.”

Off the court, you’ll be able to find the Malagars and San Diegos sitting together in the stands. If you can’t see them, you’ll hear them, especially Gabbi’s brothers Diego and Mateo who will dispense free advice to the opposing coach throughout the game. During the second half of Saturday’s win, they suggested frequently and loudly to the Tufts bench that they double San Diego. A touch ironic perhaps because San Diego is quick to admit she’s not really a big scorer. But then again, San Diego did score 32 points.

And wherever you look, you’ll find the Malagars and San Diegos enjoying the journey as friends, and hoping they can take one more road trip together in two weeks to Dallas for the national championship game.