SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Junior Lexi London and sophomore Tayli Paeu-Lindgren each scored 14 points while sophomore Layla Hernandez grabbed a team-leading 10 rebounds, but St. Francis saw a 10-point third-period lead wither to a 53-51 loss against Vista Del Lago in the first round of the Sac-Joaquin Section Division II girls' basketball tournament Tuesday night.

The seventh-seeded Troubadours finish their season at 12-17. The Eagles improve to 12-15 overall and advance to Thursday's second-round contest at No. 2 Atwater.

Paeu-Lindgren shot 6 of 11 from the floor and just missed a double-double by grabbing nine rebounds. London drained a pair of three-pointers while dishing out a team-best five assists. Senior Sydney Teoh finished with eight points on the night, closing out her outstanding St. Francis career with 1,167 points. Hernandez matched those eight points on 4-for-6 shooting, with Laila Mendoza adding another five points to go with four steals.

Junior Kelsey Brooks led Vista with 21 points, including 10 of her team's 19 in the fourth period.

St. Francis exploded to a 13-2 start during the first five minutes of play before Brooks responded with three straight field goals, bringing the Eagles back to a 13-9 hole with 48 seconds left. Vista extended Brooks' hot hand to a 14-3 overall lead in tying the game at 16-16 with 4:34 left in the second, but the Troubies quickly recovered: Hernandez's weakside rebound and putback at 4:08 restored the SF lead, then two Teoh free throws and a Mendoza steal and bucket extended that edge to 22-18 with two minutes remaining in the half.

Still, Crooks managed to collect a ball jarred loose from the key and knocked down a three-pointer at the 1:29 mark, then Bella Pallari – the Eagles' leading scorer in the previous meeting – drive the lane with 10 seconds left to boost Vista to its first lead of 23-22 heading into the break.

St. Francis regrouped in the third with a 10-2 run during the first two minutes out of the locker room. London and Mendoza each posted key steals for defensive stops, while draining back-to-back threes at 6:33 and 6:04 to put the Troubies up by a 32-25 advantage. London later assisted Natalia Zitelli with 3:18 left, Paeu-Lindgren sank a turnaround shot at 2:44 and Teoh delivered on a baseline jumper at 2:15 to propel the Troubies to a 40-30 lead, their largest since late in the first period.

Unfortunately, Vista responded with a 16-2 run of its own from a Callie Jacobosky second-chance score with 1:50 in the third to a Kamira Stephens corner three at 4:07 in the fourth. Brooks hit the second of her three treys in the comeback run, with Stephens' bomb crafting a 46-42 Vista lead – its first two-possession margin of the contest.

London buried a three-pointer to pull SF to within a single point at 46-45, but the Troubies never fully erased the deficit. Brooks put down her final three-pointer in similar fashion to her first: having a loose ball roll its way to her feet at the top of the key. She sank the shot to give her team a 51-45 lead with less than two minutes remaining.

Hernandez scored twice more down the stretch, both times following up teammate misses, but Sarahi Mazari intercepted an entry pass and Stephens wrapped up a defensive rebound to halt other Troubie possessions. St. Francis had not committed a foul during the first 7:30 of the fourth frame. The Troubies' attempts to press in the backcourt did yield a Paeu-Lindgren steal that gave way to Hernandez' final field goal, but fouls could not slow the waning clock quickly enough. A successful inbound pass to Pallari with 0.8 seconds clinched the upset win for the Eagles.

Paeu-Lindgren's nine boards brought her final season total to 347, second in the program's MaxPreps history behind only Lauren Craig's 469 as a senior in 2015-16. Teoh amassed 419 points in her final season, making her the first Troubie in the past 20 seasons to record back-to-back years of at least 400. Her career sum of 1,167 puts her second on the school's MaxPreps record book behind only Craig (1,260 from 2012-16).