For everyone on the roster, it was the first time confronting this type of pressure in this type of situation. Monday’s first round of the Region 3A West tournament is the deepest that Western Albemarle has gone since the 2012-2013 season.
So things looked awfully good for the Warriors after a strong defensive effort and an opportunistic offense capitalized to make it a 19-point contest heading into the fourth. But in a truly crazy final frame, the Warriors saw their lead nearly evaporate before senior Eleri Hayden buried a slew of free throws to wrap up a 49-39 win.
“It’s always tough in a situation like that in the fourth because you never know if you should take your foot off the gas and just work the clock,” said Western coach Kris Wright. “We told them that it had to be a Goldilocks quarter, somewhere in between the two. I don’t know that it was executed perfectly, but it turns out that it was good enough. So we’ll take it.”
Tied after the first quarter, Western’s best basketball was in the second and third quarters. The Warriors opened the second with a 6-0 run that turned into an 11-1 stretch to give them a comfy 17-7 lead with some unselfish play.
“We just played really well as a team in that stretch and it just felt good,” said Western sophomore guard Elisabeth Coffman. “We haven’t always had that for such a long period of time like we did tonight. It was great. When it started happening off a few steals the momentum just got going and going.”
Heading into the break, Western’s advantage was 22-11, and with a 5-0 start to the third, it seemed like the Minutemen were going to be left in the dust. In that third Hayden, Coffman and Anna O’Shea had their moments offensively and so heading into the fourth it was 40-19, and deftly quiet.
“That’s our identity as a program — will we buckle down and get stops and get rebounds,” Wright said. “If you do that it carries over. You get those, you feel good about yourself and then you get down the floor and try get the shots you want. We did that for the majority of the game.”
That changed when Liberty reeled off an 8-0 start to the fourth. After struggling with turnovers and playing passively on offensive, thanks in large part because of the execution of the Warriors base defense — which Wright did change between the Conference 29 consolation game and this Region 3A opener — the Minutemen got points in the paint from guard Chantel Crowder and finally were able to get their star player Rebecca Hensley rolling. Western burned through its timeouts to try and quell the momentum.
“When you’re in those timeouts, that’s when you feel the pressure,” Coffman said. “But on the court that’s when you realize that it’s just basketball. We tried to zone out of all the other stuff.”
When Liberty cut it to 43-33, the gym got loud. When it was 43-35, it got louder, and at 43-39, it was a game again with the Minutemen getting the ball with 0:48 to play. However, the game took a truly dramatic turn when Hayden came up with a defensive rebound, earned a trip to the free throw line after a foul, and then the Liberty coaching staff was hit with a technical foul for chucking a clipboard onto the court at an officials feet. Hayden hit three of the four foul shots to make it 46-39 and the Minutemen were simply unable to recover while the Warriors knocked down more free throws down the stretch to finish up the game.
“Eleri’s made some pressure free throws and we tried to set it up so that she’d be the one taking them at the end and it just didn’t work out that way until the foul and the technical,” Wright said. “At Charlottesville during the regular season, she was in this same situation and handled it so we knew she could do it again. She put the game to rest for us.”
For the senior, it was just a matter of rising up to the occasion.
“It was a little nerve-racking, very distracting,” Hayden said. “The atmosphere was crazy and we’re not really used to that, we don’t have a lot of road games that are that loud. But I was happy it ended the way it did.”
Hayden finished with a team high 20 points to go with her 11 rebounds and three steals. Hayden was 11-for-13 from the free throw line. Coffman had 14 points, four assists, four rebounds and four steals. O’Shea finished with five points.
The Warriors will travel to play Hidden Valley on Tuesday in the Region 3A West quarterfinals as young squad with some playoff experience and a sense of confidence. Western made the state tournament in two of three years between the ‘10-’11 and ‘12-’13 campaigns. Now they’ll get a crack at joining those squads in the spotlight with another win.
“We have a great coach and he knows each of our strengths and he knows how to put us the right places at the right time for us to succeed,” Coffman said. “We are definitely looking up. We’re just going to keep working.”
Western’s Eleri Hayden talks after a Region 3A West playoff win over Liberty in First off the Floor presented by Physical Therapy at ACAC. pic.twitter.com/IhCo0BzcHI
— scrimmageplay (@scrimmageplay) February 21, 2017
