On Thursday, the Lowry High School girls basketball team went to North Valleys High School in Reno as the No. 3 seed with a 14-4 league record to take on number six Elko (8-10).
Lowry scratched out a 43-42 win over Elko in first game of the NIAA 3A Northern Tournament.
“We came out so flat in the first half," said LHS coach Melanie Thurmond. "I felt like the girls were kind of sucking air, which can happen when you go into a big game. You get nervous and your adrenaline goes. We didn’t hit very many shots. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. I guess I should be happy that even when we weren’t hitting and weren’t taking care of the basketball we stayed in it, but it was way closer than it should have been. It is the postseason and teams have gotten better. It is really hard to beat a team three times in a row.”
Lowry led 12-6 after the first, but the Indians put up a nine-point run early in the second quarter to cut the Lady Bucks lead to 20-18 at the half.
Lowry pulled away a bit in the third quarter to lead 34-24, but the Indians rallied in the fourth, and they hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer to finish the game close at 43-42.
On Friday, Lowry took on Spring Creek with a taste for revenge, having lost to Spring Creek twice in league play this year. Lowry emerged from the third meeting with a 46-31 win over Spring Creek.
“Spring Creek is one of the worst three-point shooting teams in the league, so we played a zone defense against them,” Thurmond said. “We decided to go with the zone, take our chances and let them shoot, get a board and go.”
Lowry jumped to a 13-7 first quarter lead and made it 19-11 at the half. The girls took it to 29-21 at the end of three quarters and held on for the win.
“We closed it out in the second half because we were pretty smart basketball players," added the coach. "They didn’t want to pressure us, so we took our time and slowed it down to take time off the clock. That was big for us to hold onto our lead. Everyone played pretty solid, but at one point in the game when we were struggling boxing out and rebounding, I looked at Rachel (Garrison) and said I need you to grab every single board and she did. She had 14 rebounds in the game.”
Sydney Connors had 10 points, eight rebounds and four blocks in the contest, while Juli Garcia and Sierra Maestrejuan both added 10 points and Becca Kuskie had nine.
The Lady Bucks had black “Lane Closed” T-Shirts on in warm ups and threw them into the Lowry crowd at the beginning of the game against the Spartans to help get the crowd fired up.
“I wanted to go into the year with a theme,” Thurmond said. “We are a big defensive team and play man-to-man to keep people from driving the middle into the lane. So we adopted the theme ‘Lane Closed.’ This is super-fun; I love every single one of these girls. I have a blast watching them play every night.”
In the championship game on Saturday, Lowry took on Churchill County (Fallon) who came in as the No. 1 seed with an undefeated 17-0 league record and the Greenwave won 67-48.
“We started off kinda slow, we got back up, and we ended kinda slow," Thurmond said. "I don’t know what was going on there.”
Lowry was down 21-12 after one, and they trailed 37-25 at the half. Fallon stretched it to 46-37 by the end of three, and the Greenwave had an eight point run at the end of regulation to send the Lady Bucks home with the loss.
“You can’t win a basketball game with 20 turnovers,” Thurmond said. “They converted on most of them and that was the difference in the game, they have won two straight championships in a row for a reason.”
Connors has led the Lady Bucks with 10 points and 4.8 rebounds per game on the season, with Maestrejuan close behind at 9.8 and 3.3 boards. Senior Garcia added seven each contest and freshman Emily Backus was good for 5.9 on the year.
Lowry will play either Moapa Valley or Boulder City on Friday at 2:30 p.m. at the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas. The state championship is set for 11 a.m. on Saturday.
“We won’t know who we are going to play until Monday, so we will have to scout some film after the Boulder City/Moapa Valley game," Thurmond said. "We have to shore up our half-court defense this week. At this point in the season you don’t tweak too much. You just perfect what you have.”
