In front of a packed house on Tuesday night in Winnemucca, the Lowry High School girls basketball team captured the second chapter over rival Elko, which likely will turn into a trilogy next week at the Northern 3A Regional Championships in Winnemucca.
The Lady Bucks held off the Indians 69-53 to improve to 12-2 in the Northern 3A and 20-3 overall. The point total was a season-high for Lowry, who earned the No. 2 seed and a first-round bye in the regional tournament.
“It was a great win for us tonight,” said LHS coach Chelsea Cabatbat. “We played well tonight. It doesn’t mean a whole lot right now, except we get the bye. We will likely see them a third time next week for a shot at the state tournament. That will be our most important game of the year. We kept it pretty vanilla tonight and did not want to show much.”
After scoring the first four points off of baskets by Brooklyn Waller and Alyssa Kuskie, Elko answered with an 8-1 run to take a three-point lead at 8-5.
Senior Kenadee Jeppsen ended the run, scoring off an inbound play. The Lady Bucks ended the first quarter on a 6-2 run, which included a putback basket by Tiana Herrera and a 3-point shot at the buzzer by Sydney Connors. Lowry did not trail again.
The first 16 minutes of play was halted several times, as 29 fouls were whistled and both squads spent much of the first half on the free throw line. Early in the second quarter, Elko cut the Lowry lead to 20-17 after a pair of free throws, but the Lady Bucks responded with a 13-2 run to push the advantage to 33-19 with less than two minutes to play in the first half.
Hillyer started the run with two free throws of her own, and the Lowry defense took over after that, as Kuskie stole a Elko pass and relayed the ball to Connors for an easy layup and seven-point lead at 24-17.
A 3-point shot by Connors and a layup by Shelby Garrison closed out the spurt that gave Lowry a 33-19 advantage. The Lady Bucks eventually took a 34-23 lead into halftime.
Two quick buckets by Jeppsen to start the third quarter forced Elko to call a timeout with just 32 seconds elapsed. That gave Lowry its largest lead of the night at 38-23, but Elko quickly fired back with nine consecutive points to trim the deficit back to single digits.
The back-and-forth battle continued between to of the top-scoring teams in the league, as the Lady Bucks turned a nine-point margin to 17 in just three possessions. In between two 3-point field goals from Kuskie, Connors added a basket to put Lowry in front 48-31 with 3:30 left in the first half.
Every time Lowry felt comfortable, Elko had some kind of answer and came back with a 7-0 run to trim the gap back down to 48-38. The lead dropped to nine points at 50-41 with :54 to go in the third quarter, when Shelby Garrison put back a shot and Connors knocked down a 3-pointer at the buzzer to push the margin back to 55-42.
“We shot the ball and did some good things on offense,” Cabatbat said. “Elko is a team you have to outscore. They can put points on the board. The scary thing is they are so young.”
Lowry saw the lead dip below double digits one last time at 59-51 with 3:31 to play, when senior Hannah Hillyer knocked down a 10-foot shot on the baseline. Kuskie added two shots from beyond 17 feet to account for the final outcome.
Connors led all scorers with 27 points, while Kuskie joined her in double figures with 13.
Lowry closes out the regular season on the road this weekend. The Lady Bucks took on Truckee on Friday and results were not available at press time. Lowry plays Sparks today (Saturday) at 1 p.m.
Churchill County (15-0) and Lowry (12-2) have secured first-round byes for the regional tournament. Elko (10-4) has secured the third spot. Fernley is fourth at 8-7 and South Tahoe (7-7) and Spring Creek (6-8) are fifth and sixth, respectively.
