By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
PORTLAND, Ore.– The Silverton Girls Basketball team found that extra gear when they need it the most in their 55-50 victory over Alameda of California Friday night at Lincoln High School to open the POA Holiday Classic Emerald Bracket.
They trailed 33-22 at halftime and trailed as much as 37-22 early in the third quarter with momentum going against them. And they always talk about how all it takes is that one play and Head Coach Alyssa Ogle challenged her Silverton team at halftime about making that a reality with the odds and momentum stacked against them. Something that eventually came around as they began to slowly chip away at the deficit that they were looking at.
Silverton got it back to single-digits by the end of the third quarter, trailing 42-34. And that’s when the grit, their determination, and fire within took over. The Foxes spend the bulk of the frame cutting into the Hornet’s lead. Alameda came into the game ranked 23rd in the California Division 1 rankings. The CIF Division-1 division is the 6A of the State’s classification, with a 7-1 record to their name.
The Hornets’ defense created headaches in the game. Their quickness and close out speed threw the timing of Silverton off, resulting in turnovers that the Oakland-based squad took advantage of to build that initial lead. But now, in the fourth quarter, Silverton were finding ways to get around that Alameda defense to shrink that lead until they took the lead off of a Marley Wertz lay-up with 45 seconds left.
That 37-22 deficit was now a 49-48 Fox lead. A 27-11 swing for Silverton.
“It was all the kids. They all gritted it out. They’re all tired, and we’ve been so sick… but it took all 11 of our kids tonight, and all of our kids contributed and performed. They responded, they leaned on each other. One stop at a time, that’s our message when it comes down to something like that,” said Ogle. “It was a matter of not matching up with them and trying to make them shift to where we were going. It took everyone getting some movement, we got some fouls and got some stops on the defensive end and sparked some offensive buckets.
“(Alameda’s) a great team from California, and it’s a fun opportunity for us…it’s a great challenge for us as a team to step up and have an opportunity to move on tomorrow.”
Silverton extended their lead to 51-49 off free throw splits by Grace Hayashida and Allie Mansur with the game becoming a test of making your free throws in the closing seconds of the game. Something that the Foxes did well at as they closed out the game with a 55-50 victory. A victory that saw them close out the game on a 33-13 run to advance to play Southridge at 6:30 pm Saturday night up at Lincoln High School.
“We just had to play within ourselves, just dig deep and just play hard as a team,” Hadley Craig said of the comeback. “It was just playing to who we are, in the first half, we weren’t playing to how we are. In the second half, we really showed who Silverton really is. That’s what really made the difference.”
Craig finished with an 29-point, 11-rebound double-double. Hayashida finished with nine points, and Brooklyn Pfeifer finished with eight points in the win.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
