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| Published March 12, 2004 :: Home |
Trophy, Guaranteed “Hey,” Raab cracked to Alexieff. “Try to shoot from our end of the floor, OK?” “Huh?” “That was a BOMB.” She grinned. “Hey, I liked it.” There was plenty for Alexieff and her teammates to like about East Valley’s 54-37 trouncing of CWAC South regular-season champion Connell, including Alexieff’s 26-foot, buzzer-beating 3-pointer at the end of the first period. By that time, even though the game was still close, the Red Devils were already playing and shooting better than they had a day earlier in their quarterfinal loss to Pullman. “Yesterday, nothing was working for us,” said Jami Sharp, who en route to her game-high 14 points made her first four 3-point attempts. “I think it helped us out today that it was Connell. We wanted our revenge against them. We weren’t going to let them beat us for a third time.” Connell had won both of its two regular-season meetings with the Red Devils by a combined six points, but this time East Valley was in control of the game almost from the moment midway through the first period when Sharp hit her second 3-pointer — like the first, on an assist from Jessica Huntington. Although the game was tied as late as the first minute of the second quarter, the Eagles never led and spent much of the game in foul trouble. In fact, East Valley (21-6) spent so much time at the foul line — 26 attempts to the Eagles’ seven — that had the Devils hit more than half their attempts, the game might have been even more one-sided than it was. Because they were certainly on target from the field. “We didn’t shoot well. That’s the bottom line,” said Connell coach Dwight Arlington, whose team finishes 21-5. “We did a pretty good job with our press, but if you press and get the ball, you still have to put it in the basket, and we didn’t do that. “East Valley played a great game. What’d they hit, eight 3’s?” Seven-for-13, actually. “Well, we didn’t hit ours.” Connell, in fact, was just 1-for-15 from beyond the arc, and could never really get back into a game that East Valley was in — and ON — from the opening tip. It was a stark contrast to the previous day’s showing in the Red Devils’ 17-point loss to Pullman. “We did the same thing today as we did yesterday. We just didn’t hit any sh ots yesterday,” Raab said, referring to the team’s daily tournament ritual of an early-morning meeting and film session at the coach’s house, followed by a walk-through at the Red Devils’ gym. “Sharp hit some big 3’s for us today. She had a lot of spunk in her today. You could see that little spark in her eyes at the walk-through, you could see she was ready to play, ready to help her teammates — all the things you want to see from your captain.” East Valley had plenty of contributors Friday. Ten Devils figured in the scoring, led by Sharp, Tana Stickney with 11 and Jennifer Newland with 9. Huntington dished out five assists and combined with Whitney Murphy for six of the Devils’ 10 steals. So the Devils clinch a trophy — which one will be determined at 1:30 p.m. Saturday when they play for fourth and seventh against Cascade, against whom they’ve won two of three this year. “To get a trophy is very pleasing,” Raab said. “In three and a half months, for these kids to pick up an entirely new system, to do everything that was asked of them and to be where they are ...” He offered a little smile. “It’s very pleasing. Very satisfying.” For someone else, too — Raab’s predecessor, the late Jack Cleveland, who died from a heart attack last summer.
“We know,” Murphy told a television camerman, “he’s up
there watching us.”
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