At the buzzer

There's nothing like a good nail-biter.

When it comes to 3A North Region basketball, the edge-of-the-seat kind of games come by the dozen.

In Ganado last Thursday, the Winslow Bulldogs (18-6) had a plan to beat the Hornets (2-14) for the second time this season.

But what they didn't plan on was an overtime victory, 71-70.

Through the four quarters of the game, Ganado's 6-foot-3 junior Marcus Begay dominated the paint giving Winslow a run for their money.

Winslow head coach Ricky Greer said the plan was to take the Hornets out of their game.

"I thought we could force them into quite a few turnovers," he said. "Unfortunately, we didn't execute the game plan very well.

"We wanted the guys on the ball and to make it a tough pass," he said. "We didn't put the pressure on them. I felt the defense the whole night was very, very poor. Our whole goal was to shut down Marcus Begay yet he finished the game with 28 points."

With just over a minute left in the fourth quarter, the score was tied 59-59.

A three-point shot by Winslow's Tyler William gave the Bulldogs the lead 62-59.

A three-pointer by Sherwin Hale tied the game at 62.

Winslow had a chance to win the game with 4.2 seconds left but ran out of time.

Winslow junior Craig Shirley said a lot could have been done to prevent the overtime.

"Our defense, we didn't play the defense we could have played," he said." Getting up in high positions, pressure the ball a little more and we kind of just let them do what they wanted. We didn't dictate nothing on defense."

But Winslow picked up the pieces in the end and left with the win.

Greer said though it was a sloppy win his team is showing promise.

"Our guys are really starting to play ball, really starting to understand," he said. "I want the kids to be fundamentally sound."

Girls

At Monument Valley (14-4), the Winslow girls (15-4) came to town for a possible preview of the 3A state championship.

In their last meeting in December, the Lady Bulldogs defeated Monument Valley, 48-46, in Winslow's tournament. But this time, the Lady Mustangs defeated Winslow 64-63.

It was a highly anticipated game with a large crowd. The teams battled to the last second in the last quarter.

Monument Valley took the lead at the half, 33-28. Winslow fell behind more than 10 points but was able to stick close with three-point shots by junior Felencia Keams.

But the first half belonged to the Lady Mustangs, specifically junior Bradley Nash.

Winslow head coach Don Petranovich said the goal was to get Nash out of her game but the team didn't do what they were supposed to do.

"We wanted to break the press which we did pretty successfully," he said. "We just tried to hold Bradley down, but we didn't do a very good job of that."

Petranovich said the game was up for grabs even though his team fell behind early in the ball game.

Winslow was able to tie things up early in the fourth and the two teams shared the lead all the way through the quarter.

With Winslow leading by one point and 3 seconds left in the game, Monument Valley played for a last-second shot by Nash.

But Winslow fouled Nash with .05 seconds left and, two free throws later, the Lady Mustangs won, 64-63.

Monument Valley head coach Robert Nash said though his team got the win they didn't do their job of stopping Winslow's outside shots.

"We stayed in the zone too long and we had to come out of it in that fourth quarter and we went strictly man to man," he said. "I think that's what saved our game. Fortunately we won just because of that move right there.

"They were hitting threes left and right and we couldn't take care of it sitting in the zone," he said.

Bradley Nash finished with 29 points.

"We should have been dropping people down to help," Petranovich said. "We kept letting her get around us. We were letting her catch it. She has a lot of talent and she'll just keep taking it to the hoop

"We worked on it today (Monday) very hard in practice. We got to get better at that," he said. "We're not really a tall team, we're very short. That hurt us a little bit."

Back to top ^