SPARKS — Coming into the Northern 2A Regional Basketball Championships last weekend at Sparks High School, the Battle Mountain girls liked the position it was in entering as the No. 3 seed.
Battle Mountain would face Incline, a team it beat by 29 points on the last day of January in Incline Village. The two teams were back together on Friday afternoon for a spot in the state tournament.
While everything went right for the Lady Longhorns on that night in Incline, it went the other direction in the playoffs.
Battle Mountain was held to one field goal in the first half, as Incline pulled away late for a 56-41 win.
“Their big girls were a problem for us,” said BMHS coach Paul Tremayne. “They were getting the ball inside on us and then they hit a couple 3-pointers that put it out of reach. We had trouble scoring and we ran into that problem a few times this year. We had a stretch where we could not score.”
Battle Mountain's lone field goal of the first half was a 3-pointer by Sruti Bhakta with 4:03 left in the first quarter.
The Lady Longhorns did not make another field goal until the 6:53 mark of the third quarter on a basket by Grace Melver, who went over the 1,000-point mark of her career during the game.
The only thing that kept Battle Mountain within striking distance was the free throw line. The Lady Longhorns scored 17 of its 20 first-half points from the charity stripe. Battle Mountain was 17-of-19 from the free throw line in the first half.
The Lady Longhorns grabbed a 9-6 lead after a 3-pointer by Bhakta and two free throws by Kabrie Nield. However, Incline answered with a 9-0 run and did not trail again.
Incline led 25-20 at halftime and extended the margin to 32-23 with 4:36 left in the third quarter. Battle Mountain answered with a 7-0 run off baskets by Bhakta (3-pointer), Kira Smith and Drue Domagala.
After making just two field goals in the first 19 minutes of the game, Battle Mountain made three field goals in the last three minutes of the third quarter. To cut the deficit to 32-30.
Early in the fourth quarter, Incline’s Taylor Redfern knocked down a 3-pointer to increase the lead to 37-30, only to see Melver answer with a 3-pointer of her own.
The long distance shooting continued, as Redfern knocked down another 3-pointer the next time down the floor. Redfern hit her third 3-pointer of the quarter with 3:28 to play to extend the margin to 47-35.
Lady Longhorns knock
off Wolverines
Battle Mountain opened the tournament on Thursday with a 58-37 win over West Wendover.
The game was tied at 7 in the first quarter, when Battle Mountain closed with a 12-3 run to lead 19-10. Melver had six of those points, while Nield, Smith and Bhakta had buckets as well.
Melver added eight more points in the second quarter, as Battle Mountain outscored West Wendover 14-5 to lead 33-15 at halftime.
The Lady Longhorns led by as many as 23 points in the third quarter after a 3-pointer by Bhakta.
However, West Wendover netted the final six points of the third quarter and first three of the fourth quarter to make the score 43-29, but that was as close as the Wolverines got.
Melver and Nield added eight quick points to push the advantage back to 51-35 and the Lady Longhorns were not challenged from there.
Battle Mountain finished 20-7 on the year and graduates four seniors in Alexis Andrade, Bhakta, Domagala and Melver.
“You always want to get to the state tournament but we came up short,” Tremayne. “It was still a good year for us.”
