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Show Page 6 OREM GENEVA TIMES Thursday. March 12006 0 v SPORTS. PEOPLE AND OUTDOOR FUN Tigers win giirfls 4A bastetba chamioioinislhiDP Jared Lloyd Af'i-r I nia s heart -stopping overtime over-time defeat i: impview. Orem's third i I' re i nn'fs; in a row Tiger head ( '. ! h Ross K'tti said he would love to i m- on: and have a game that didn't i ome down lo the wire I i- had no idea his team was listen- i r-m dominated the second half of he i. sta'e title game agamst Bonn-evili- Saturday night at Salt Lake Community Com-munity lonege. pulling away for the 1 j r)2 victory to prove they are the best '-am in their classification in 20()6. This i- ?he greatest feeling." Tiger senior ton. ard Ijndsie Wilson said. 1 m )iM so glad to finish the year like ;his This is what I've always dreamed about There's nothing bigger in high si hooi basketball " As 'he :mal seconds ticked off the ( i. k he ( )rem bench piled onto the court in celebration. After getting the trophy the entire team took it over to be st udent sect i' n to share the moment mo-ment with the fans In the end when I knew we had it. there were v many emotions," junior I-:. I . ..at Jr' dp1- ' 'V guard Delyse Downey said. "I've never been so excited. I'm just so happy for my team, so proud of them, they never gave up." The big difference after the break came on the glass. The Lakers got a lot of second-chance points in the first two quarters to go in at half only down one. "In the first half, we were shirking off." Tiger junior Jessica Saliby said. "We just had to come out and get it done." The Orem coaches emphasized boxing box-ing out during the intermission and Saliby appeared to take that personally. personal-ly. She led Tigers with 11 boards, most of those coming on the defensive end. But the real surprise came at the offensive end, where Orem has struggled strug-gled at times this year. On Saturday, however, the Tigers came out firing on all cylinders and never let up. They tied a season-high by scoring 66 points. "That is our offense," Reed said. "It's nice to see it working out there. That's what it looks like. We hit a lot of big shots." Orem had success inside, where junior ju-nior center Jamie Sagers poured in 17 points, and also around the perimeter, where Downey matched that totaL including in-cluding a trio of 3-pointers The Tigers finished with four players in double figures. "Everyone stepped up and shot the ball, even those who don't usually shoot it." WiLson said. "Everyone just played so well out there " The Tigers built a nine-point lead heading into the final quarter, but they knew they couldn 't relax They came out in the final eight minutes and took care of business, never allowing Bonneville Bonn-eville to go on a run. They aLso did a good job slowing down Laker star Jessie Baddley, the leading scorer in the tournament. She only managed 14 points on 4-of-17 shooting. "Delyse (Downey) really stepped up." WiLson said. "We didn't let her get fast breaks or very many good looks." The best moments for Reed came in the last minute, when he was able to clear the bench. "I said during the shootaround that See CHAMPIONS. Page 7 ' 1 M xC V v, - - 1 '. -. '". ''Xae-.t. s 4 " ' - ' I J " ' fJ - 7 T r y y Photos by MARIO RUIZNorth County Orem's Jessica Saliby defends Bonneville's Roxanne Winegar during the 4A state championship game Saturday. At left, the Tigers' Lindsie Wilson brings the ball upcourt in the title game. Bruins go cold in final period, fall just short in 5A title game Chris Peterson Mountain View went cold at exactly the wrong moment. Just when n looked iike Bruin star Michelle Harrison was going go-ing to get her game going in the 5A state championship. Mountain Moun-tain View's collective shooting range abandoned them Harrison bound for Stanford Stan-ford without a state title under her belt connected on just her second field goal of the contest to begin the fourth quarter to pull the Bruins ahead But Mountain View would only make a single shot the rest of the way The result was a 46-i defeat at the hands of Skyline on Saturday Sat-urday night at Salt Lake Community Com-munity College "Once again, it was a great team effort." Skyline coach Deb Bennett said "It's great to see what kind of character this team has " Clearly, the Eagles game plan was to double and sometimes some-times tnple-ieam the 6-foot -3 Harrison, and make someone else beat them Even though the game stayed close throughout, that strategy almost backfired on Skyline Natalie Hall opened the Bruins' Bru-ins' scoring with identical right baseline jumpers, then followed it up with an eight -footer m the lane. After an Erica Eyestone 3-pointer 3-pointer put Mountain View on top 13-7. sophomore guard Jen-teal Jen-teal Jackson nailed her second trey of the quarter to pull the Eagles to within 13-10 after the first period. Jackson, who finished the night with a game-high 21 points, simply brought her "A" game. She followed up the impressive im-pressive first quarter with two more 3-pomters. but her Eagles still trailed by two. at 23-21. In all. Jackson shot 7-of-15 from the field and was fvof-8 from 3-point range. On the other side of the ball it was certainly not Harrison's finest night. She ended with just six points, and after hitting two free throws in the first half, didn't score a field goal until there was 1:55 remaining in the third quarter. That gave Mountain View a 32-28 advantage, and other than the lead at the start of the final period, that would be it for the Bruins. Mountain View coach Laura Romo acknowledged that the Eagles were focusing on Harrison, Harri-son, but said a bigger factor in her standout's lack of success involved Harrison's play. "She was just off tonight." Romo said. Following Hall's field goal, the Bruins were held scoreless score-less for the rest of the game, a grinding stretch of almost four and a half minutes. But even with the long absence ab-sence of scoring. Mountain View still had a chance with just over a minute to play. Down 40-36, Harrison got the ball just inside the 3-point arc, split a double-team, then executed a beautiful fake on a third Eagle defender. Now six feet from the bas- Vi I tin f ! J -f : w x -s - f ... ,- ( ... '. f f 'l ' A I 11 mm--y. 1 .. 1 ft ' v... Li. "f .,M K MARIO RUIZNortn County Mounta in View's Monique Smith shoots the ball over a Skyline defender in the 5A state championship game Saturday. ket, Harrison raised up for a seemingly simple shot. But just as most of her shot attempts on this night, it rimmed out. All Romo could do was shake her head. "I'm excited to have been in the championship game," Romo said. "We've been through a lot of adversity this seasoa Would I have liked to win? Certainly. Would the girls liked to have won? Certainry. But we didnt play well enough to win." Other than Jackson's 21 points, Alicia White finished with six for Skyline. Hall led Mountain View with 12 points, while Eyestone contributed con-tributed nine. I Chris Peterson can be reached at cpetersonheraldextra.com. Svi?46 Mountain Wew 36 MOUNTAIN WW OS) Mamsont EvesOneS MM 12 Ometas 3 Rgg$2. Owr, 0 SmtnO StrosnroO Totals I36-S36 SKYUKM6) wnwe. Saomki 2 ManonS JuKontl. JKMonJI. LmosayC Cooef 2 Brw 1 Jonmoi 0 Bengstm 2. Up 6 Totals IS 11-19 46 THE NIGHT OREM m 13 10 4 36 IS 11 11 14 w 3-oom goals Mountain ttew 4 (brwsre 3. Onansi. Skym 5 uackson S o one who has followed fol-lowed high school girls basketball in the last few years can be surprised that an Orem team brought the state trophy home Saturday night. Or that a team from Orem cut down the nets and draped them around their necks. A team from Orem heard Queen's "We are the champions" champi-ons" to honor its accomplishment. accomplish-ment. A team from Orem sent off a set of seniors on the top of their game. The surprise was which team did it. Thanks to the reclassification, Utah Valley and more specifically spe-cifically Orem had two teams competing to the highest honor in their sport. In the 5A corner was Mountain Moun-tain View, a team that had won eight of the past 10 state titles in its classification, including five when the Bruins were in the 5A ranks before. The Bruins came in as the No. 1-ranked team in the Valley, winners of a tough Region 4 crown, with McDonald's All-American All-American Michelle Harrison to focus the offense on. Although Mountain View didnt win last year, this is a team that knows success at the tournament. But not on Saturday. This day belonged to Orem For years, the Tigers played in the shadow of their more famous neighbor. It had been 22 years since the girls team in the Tiger blue and gold had climbed to the top of the prep game. They entered the Class 4A tournament without even having hav-ing won Region 7, a division that appeared down during the year. Jared Lloyd Tournament View Some didnt think they could get out of the first round. Few believed beating 4A power Murray was even a possibility. possibil-ity. Things even looked grim against region foe Timpview in the semifinals on Friday. But the Tigers never doubted their potential "During the first week, I told this team that they were good enough to win state," said Orem head coach Ross Reed. "They just needed to buy into the system sys-tem When you have a tough preseason and play in a tough region, good things can happen. And good things happened." It was a resolve the players took to heart in their approach to the game. "They told us we deserved to win a state title," said senior forward Lindsie Wilson. They asked how hard we were going to work for it. Now we've won and showed everyone that we deserved to be here." Orem played with a lot of emotion in the tournament. Sometimes everyone on the floor looked like they were just out there having the best time of their lives. Other times they were shouting, arguing, pushing push-ing each other to play better. They also never lost their heart or their composure. When they needed a pair of free throws against Highland, sophomore soph-omore Brianne Larsen knocked them down. Trailing Timpview by a bucket with only seconds on the clock, they calmly ran a play to perf ectioa See LLOYD, Page 7 POOR |