By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
PHILOMATH, Ore.– Down 28-23 early in the fourth quarter, the Silverton Girls Basketball team found another gear en route to their 39-31 victory against Philomath on Saturday afternoon.
The key in the final eight minutes of the game was staying disciplined. To stay tough defensively and surely, they began to chip away at the deficit against the Warriors.
By midway through the fourth quarter, they pulled ahead of Philomath, 28-27, with 4:09 left in the game off a three-pointer by Ashlyn Davisson.
“We’ve been really working on getting over the hump and we know we wanted to get back to defending. We got stops, we got good looks, we slowly chipped away and we got over the hump by just defending. They’re a great team, they’re tough, they’re physical, they’re big. I’m just super proud of our girls’ intensity and toughness on the defensive end to stay disciplined ,” said Silverton Head Coach Alyssa Ogle.
Silverton would push their lead to 32-28 following a pair of Ashlyn Davisson free throws with 2:49 left in the game. But Philomath wasn’t done yet.
Libby Kramer connected on a three-pointer soon after Davisson’s three-pointer to get the Warriors back to within one. And despite the Foxes pushing their lead back to three, leading 34-31 with 2:23 left, Philomath’s defense held tough.
Defense has been their calling card under Head Coach Ben Silva, it helped them in recent years with their deep playoff runs in the 4A Classification as they once more look to do the same again this year coming off of their 4A State Runner-Up finish last season.
“That’s been our bread-and-butter is on the defensive end. We pride ourselves on being tough on the defensive end and making it hard on teams to score. (Silverton’s) also a really good team on the defensive end, it was hard for us to score today as well,” laughs Silva. “You hope you’d hold a team down to below 40 and find a way to win, we just struggled finishing a couple of times. With their physicality, they were physical around the hoop and it made it difficult to score.”
This preseason, playing team’s like Silverton, the defending 5A State Champions in Crater, the 5A State Runner-Up South Albany, the tournament down in Southern California, has helped prepare them as they being their Oregon West Conference schedule Tuesday against Sweet Home back at home.
“We’ve had a lot of great games this preseason, we played a lot of really tough teams around the State and I think it got us ready for league,” said Silva.
The score remained at 34-31 into the closing seconds of the contest on Saturday, the final 17 seconds of the game saw Silverton ice the game at the line as the Foxes went on to win by eight. Outscoring Philomath 16-3 in the final frame in a rare non-league game in the middle of their Mid-Willamette Conference slate. The win was also the Foxes fourth-in-a-row.
“It was really a big win on the road. We played last night, quick turnaround and traveled an hour here to play a really tough team, they’re really good on defense. They were everything that we expected them to be,” said Silverton’s Karlee Martirano. “Our mentality and our gameplan on every game is defense. Get stops, get stops, get stops and get buckets on the offensive end, so as long as we stick to our defensive scout every game, I think good things will happen for us.”
Martirano led the Foxes with 15 points with nine rebounds. Ashlyn Davisson had a team-high 12 rebounds in the win, Silverton travels to play Crescent Valley on Tuesday. Brown led the Warriors with six points, three Philomath players each scored five points apiece.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
