PAGE A20, KEIZERTIMES, JULY 2, 2021
Swarming defense puts Celts over the
top in season fi nale against Sherwood
M C N AR Y
HOOPS
BY MATT RAWLINGS
Of the Keizertimes
The McNary girls basketball team
gave one of their best performances of
the season in their fi nal game of the year.
Leah Doutt fi lled out the stat sheet
with 18 points, six assists, fi ve steals and
eight rebounds while Bekah Grimmer
added 14 points and eight rebounds as
the Celtics defeated Sherwood 48-29 to
take third place in the White Bracket of
a culminating-week state tournament at
Grant High School on Thursday, June 24.
“I am just really proud of our girls,
for the season in general, and especially
these last three games,” McNary coach
Elizabeth Doran said.
The Celtics fi nish the year with a 12-3
record. Despite the season being short-
ened due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it
is McNary’s highest win total since the
2017-18 season.
“We knew going in that this was
going to be our last game together, so we
wanted to go out and leave it all out on
the court. We really executed our game
plan,” Doutt said.
The biggest aspect of the McNary
game plan was fi guring out how to slow
down Sherwood’s Ava Heiden – a 6-foot-4
post who is considered to be one of the
best freshman players in the state.
Without a player over 5-foot-9, Doran
elected to play a 2-3 zone for the entire
game, with two players at the bottom of
the zone covering Heiden.
The plan worked to perfection as the
Celtics limited Heiden to just fi ve points
— Sherwood’s 29 points for the game was
their lowest output of the season.
“We executed our defensive scout to a
Leah Doutt puts defensive pressure on the ball at the top of McNary's 2-3 zone in the Celtics 48-29 win over Sherwood.
Photo by MATT RAWLINGS of Keizertimes
T and just did a really good job. Overall
our defense was tremendous,” Doran said.
“We pretty much had two kids on her at
all times. We played one in front and one
behind to discourage the pass into her,
because if she gets the ball inside, we are
in a bad situation. Limiting her touches
around the basket was our game plan.”
“We had to keep her out of the key and
box her out hard so she couldn't get off en-
sive rebounds,” Grimmer added. “We had
good communication to keep her away
from the basket."
Despite their exceptional defensive
eff ort, the Celtics had a hard time get-
ting going off ensively early on as they
only held a 6-4 lead at the end of the fi rst
quarter.
But at the start of the second period,
Doutt began to take over.
The senior point guard had a put-
back basket off her own miss to begin the
quarter, then knocked down a runner on
the following possession.
Later in the period, Doutt got fouled
on her way to the basket on separate
occasions and knocked down all four free
throws to put the Celtics on top 14-8.
“We were struggling, so I was just
attacking whenever I could and trying to
get open shots for my team,” Doutt said.
“Getting Bekah some shots in the paint
was also really helpful.”
Doutt went from scorer to facilitator
late in the fi rst half as she hit Grimmer
with a pair of beautiful feeds for easy
hoops off the pick-and-roll action.
“They switched all screens, that gave
us some mismatches that Leah was able
to attack. We were just taking advantage
of mismatches,” Doran said.
A steal and fast-break layup by Doutt
Worship DIRECTORY
These Salem-Keizer houses of worship invite you to visit. Call to list your church in our Worship Directory: 503-390-1051
YOUR CHURCH'S
LISTING HERE.
www.KeizerChristian.org
Call Bill at 503.390.1051