PAGE B2, KEIZERTIMES, MARCH 18, 2016
Defying odds:
By ERIC A. HOWALD
Of the Keizertimes
All season long, the Mc-
Nary High School girls varsity
basketball team had occasion
to let their emotions get the
better of them.
When South Salem High
School denied them the
chance to capture a Greater
Valley Conference title, they
didn’t break. When Jesuit High
School ousted them from con-
tention for a state title in the
fi rst round of the state tour-
nament last week, they didn’t
even bend.
“This group has bounced
back,” said Derick Handley,
McNary head coach. “We lost
to Jesuit and it would have
easy to mail it in, instead they
turned around and beat the
No. 1 team in the coach’s poll
(Oregon City High School)
entering the tournament by
nine points.”
The 55-46 win over Or-
egon City pitted the Celts
against the second-ranked
team in the state, South Med-
ford High School, in a game
for fourth place Saturday,
March 12, at the University of
Portland’s Chiles Center.
The game went not only
the distance, but an extra four
minutes of overtime that saw
McNary win 57-52. It was
only then that the tears of joy
began to fl ow.
“For us seniors, going out
like this it’s such a great ac-
complishment, because there is
no other team we’d rather do
it with. We got here together
and we made it all the way to
the end,” said Lady Celt Madi
Hingston.
It was a pitch perfect end-
ing to a season in which the
team had already made school
history with the most wins for
a girls basketball team. MHS
ended the year at 23-6.
“It’s kind of mind-blowing
and surreal once it’s all over
to pick up that trophy. Now
it’s ended on a good note and
we’re happy,” added junior
Sydney Hunter.
McNary’s victory was never
a sure thing in the match with
South Medford. The teams
knotted the score three times
in the fi rst frame alone before
a two-pointer by Kaelie Flores
put the Celtics ahead before
the buzzer.
In the second quarter,
South Medford began making
a strong offensive push and led
by as many as fi ve points be-
fore a trey by Hingston and a
bucket by senior Reina Strand
tied the game again, 27-27,
going to halftime.
“Once we got to halftime,
we fi nally started settling
down and that’s when I think
the game began to change. We
kept our composure no mat-
ter what,” said Kailey Doutt,
a sophomore and the Greater
Valley Conference’s Defender
of the Year.
In the fi rst half of the third
quarter, the Celts snapped a
7-0 run by the Panthers with a
trip to the foul line by Strand,
then Hingston hit another
three-pointer to retake the
lead 35-34. South Medford
took it back on the next pos-
session, but a trey by Flores
and two-pointer by Hingston
put the score at 40-38, Mc-
Nary leading, as the fourth
quarter began.
The Panthers tied the game
and took the lead again at the
beginning of the fourth peri-
od. They carried it until there
was 3:19 left in the game. Then,
Hingston hit a trey and a two-
pointer to overtake South 49-
47. With 16 seconds left in the
game, Hingston made a trip
to the foul line and sunk both
shots making the score 52-49,
but South Medford took the
ball back down the court and
hit a three-point shot to tie the
game with seven seconds left.
The Celtics were able to
make it back down the court
Lady Celts take 4th
in state tourney
KEIZERTIMES/Eric A. Howald
ABOVE: the Lady Celts exit the court after winning a game against
South Medford High School in overtime to take fourth in the OSAA
6A state tournament. RIGHT: The team with their trophy.
and get off a shot and two re-
bound attempts, but none of
them fell.
All fi ve of the points in the
four-minute overtime were
made at the foul line by Hunt-
er, Flores and Hingston.
“We knew they were lack-
ing depth, so part of the game
plan was we wanted to wear
them out. I didn’t want to give
up a three with seven seconds
left to go to overtime to wear
them out, but we knew that
their energy would be an is-
sue,” said Handley.
The loss to Jesuit in the
fi rst game of the tournament
served as a wake-up call for
how McNary approached the
next two games of the tourna-
ment.
“We knew it was going
to be a struggle for us, but it
showed us that we were go-
ing to have to come out even
harder the next day and that’s
what we did,” said senior Kae-
lie Flores.
In the fi rst round of the
consolation games with Or-
egon City, McNary got blitzed
in the opening minutes and
was trailing 12-0 by 3:41 in
the fi rst frame. The Celts re-
grouped and cut the lead to
fi ve by the fi rst buzzer and had
a 14-4 run that spanned the
fi rst two periods.
McNary never let Pioneers
get that far ahead again. In the
third period, after 23 minutes
of Oregon City leading the
game, Hingston hit a trey to
tie the game at 37-37 and then
another on McNary’s next
possession to take a 40-38 lead
the Keizer team would never
relinquish en route to the 55-
46 win.
McNary wreaked enough
havoc on offense in the fourth
quarter to cause three of Ore-
gon City’s starters to foul out
of the game.
“It’s great to prove people
wrong. We were the underdog
coming into this and we were
expected to come in and lose
two games and go home,” said
Strand. “Instead we came in,
hung around and we showed
them what McNary is made
of.”
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