Every team is a novel, a story that evolves over time. Practices. Nonleague games. League contests. And then the playoffs, the ultimate climax. The Silverton girls basketball team wrote a masterpiece this season, with far too many elements to wrap into a 750-word column. But I will try.
First, was the historic comeback. The Foxes rallied from a 17-point third-quarter deficit to beat Crater of Central Point 61-60 in overtime to win the Class 5A title on March 9 in McMinnville.
No team, boys or girls, has won a 5A title after overcoming that large a deficit in at least 10 years. The closest was the 2016 Foxes, who trailed Springfield by 11 in the third quarter and closed on an 18-6 run to win the title game 39-38. No winning boys team has had to face a deficit of more than seven points during title games since.
“I just kept telling them to slowly chip away and that the most composed team will win this game,” second-year Foxes coach Alyssa Ogle told Our Town in a Monday email. “The girls really locked into that message, and it helped us. We kept saying, ‘just get one stop at a time on defense and then we go down and get a bucket.’ Our message this year on defense was Stops = Buckets. The keys to the comeback were the kids. They just wanted to compete and fight back, and I am so proud of them.”
The road back began after Crater’s Addison Dippel sank a layup with 5:07 left in the third period, giving the Comets a 43-26 lead. The rest of the way the Foxes were dominant, outscoring a team that had won 23 straight by
a 35-17 count.
Grace Hayashida gave the comeback an early jolt of Stephen Curry-like electricity with back-to-back three-pointers. On the first she was fouled and sank the free throw for a four-point play. The 7-0 run in 38 seconds made it a 45-37 hill to climb with still 3:16 left in the third quarter. But the Foxes and their increasingly loud cadre of fans knew that the tide was turning.
Everyone pitched in. Junior Brooklyn Pfeifer didn’t score, but she had five rebounds, two assists and took two charges. Senior Justina Semerikov went on a heroic 6-0 run in the fourth quarter just when it looked like the rally was dying. Crater, which found its lead gone at 48-48 after an Olivia Boyd layup, built the lead back to 54-48 with five minutes to go. Then, after an agonizing two-plus minutes in which neither team scored, Semerikov in 76 seconds went layup (feed from Pfeifer), two free throws and layup (feed from Hayashida) to make it 54-54 with 1:41 left. In the overtime sophomore Allie Mansur took a charge with 16 seconds left, fouling out Dippel in the process.
And, there was Boyd, who made the second of her two free throws with less than a second left in the extra period to seal the deal and send the pro-Foxes crowd onto the court in a frenzy. And, of course, there was senior Kyleigh Brown, who played all but 10 seconds of the final, handling the ball almost constantly and filling the scoresheet with 22 points, 12 rebounds and five assists. She came within one assist of leading the tournament in all three categories. But what impressed me the most was that she took only 10 shots in the final. She knew that the Crater defenders were going to be on her like crazed lemurs. So she picked her spots, found her teammates and kept everyone composed.
She told me afterward, “we knew we had to take care of the ball, slow things down and look for the openings.”
Sounds simple, but it worked. After 2.5 quarters the Foxes were in a 17-point crater and seemingly doomed. After that the Foxes, slowly, inspiringly, found the true grit to get it done.
“Grit was a key to the game for us, but in all honesty the second-half rally was heart and trust from these kids,” Ogle said. “We are an extremely close team, and the players trust each other and the coaching staff. We just locked in together and went to work against a great Crater team.”
Brown was a unanimous all-tournament pick, with Hayashida on the second team. Boyd earned player of the game honors for the Foxes in the final. Brown, Semerikov and Hayashida earlier were named to the all-Mid-Willamette Conference first team, with Brown earning player of the year honors and Ogle named coach of the year.
Great team, memorable characters. Yes, I’d read that novel. No doubt.
