By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
STAYTON, Ore.– The Regis Girls Basketball team were prepared for the second half run by Western Christian. They were expecting it after their first meeting back on January 9 over at Western Christian.
They, the Rams, used a strong second quarter where they outscored the Pioneers 20-10 to enter the second half leading 38-20. Regis pushed their lead to 20, 40-20, early in the second half before Western Christian made that run that they were expecting.
“At halftime we knew that they were going to make a run for it and that if we can hold them off when they did make that run, luckily we used our speed, our quickness and we were able to shut them down and got some key defensive plays and we got some big offensive plays at the same time,” said Regis Head Coach Tim Manning.
In a span of about a quarter-and-a-half, Western Christian worked their way back into the game. They executed on both sides of the ball. They rebounded well, pushed their offense and executed. With 1:20 left in the third quarter, the lead was down to 45-39 as the Pios put the pressure on their rivals to do something about their rival.
Regis answered though. Knowing that this run was coming, they found another gear and pushed their lead back to ten going into the fourth quarter, leading Western Christian 52-42 at this point. The seeds of momentum were already there. All the Pios needed to do was to refocus once more.
And they did just that.
Over the first three-and-half minutes of the fourth quarter, Western didn’t let the Rams out of their reach. With 4:30 left in the game, the once 20-point Regis lead was reduced to five with the Rams leading 57-52 with plenty of game left for madness to occur.
The philosophy during this whole run that Western was on, the 32-17 run at this point, was essentially to keep working on it. Get it to ten after three quarters, they did that and accepted that it was going to take some time to see it through and be patient through it all.
“That’s what the girls kept in mind. They weren’t going to get it all back in one possession, they knew that it was going to take time. The girls kept fighting,” said Western Christian Head Coach Ben Brown. “”We got fouled a bunch, got a lot of free throws, a lot of hustle plays that we turned into And-One’s and O(ffensive) boards, stuff like that. We really got into a rhythm and we got a good run, that’s impressive, but we ran out of gas. They weathered the storm and they finished it off.”
Regis needed something fast. A stop. A big basket. A run. Anything to get momentum starting to swing by into their favor.
Luckily, they found that.
Some clutch shots from their offense, some big shots from Frankie Koehnke in particular as the freshman scored ten of her game-high 29 points in the final frame and slowly the Rams began to pull away. By game’s end, they would finish the game on a 15-3 run to take the game 72-55 to remain undefeated in Tri-River Conference play going into the next-to-last-week of league play.
“”It was really tight and that really motivated us to keep going and be a good team,” said Koehnke. “We knew that they’ll fire back in the second half and I think our coaches did a really good job preparing us for it. We can definitely improve on rebounding and setting up the offense.”
Regis, who saw Clara Persons (17) and Hadley Foster (10) score in double-figures in the victory, will head to Colton on Tuesday and Western Christian will head to play Kennedy on Tuesday. Kylie Sommer led the Pioneers with 19 points and Kinsey Wark contributed another 15 points in the game for the Pios.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
