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| Published March 13, 2004 :: Home |
Red Devils Take Fourth Then there’s the kind of game facing East Valley’s girls on Saturday. They had plenty of emotion to draw on, but it wasn’t the we’ve-gotta-win brand. It was more I’m-going-to-miss-this. And when the legs are already dragging on a fourth straight day of intense basketball, that kind of emotion can be like dead weight. “Our legs were just dead,” senior co-captain Jennifer Newland said. “We were all very tired,” fellow senior Angie Mullen said. “Our legs were gone.”
Somewhere, somehow, the Devils found the strength to move those legs, lift that weight and finish this season the way the seniors had finished each of the previous three: with a victory. Their 42-27 triumph over Cascade for the fourth-place trophy was precisely that — a triumph. Of will. “They did what they always do. They find a way to win,” said coach Robi Raab, at the end of an emotional roller-coaster of a season that was preceded by the unexpected death of previous coach Jack Cleveland and climaxed with back-to-back state-tournament victories after a potentially crushing quarterfinal defeat. On Saturday, they had to find an emotional reserve to make up for what their bodies couldn’t quite give them. Both teams were so dead-legged throughout the first half that some jump shots became set shots and others looked more like shot puts and grenade tosses. This is how ugly it got: At one point late in the second quarter, the teams were shooting a combined 5-for-39. So Raab looked to some fresh legs — those of reserves Brittany Alexieff, Jamie Price and Kaci Komstadius, who jump-started the Devils’ offense in the final two minutes of the first half, turning a four-point lead into an eight-point edge. “They gave us a big boost of energy,” Raab said, adding that those reserves “are the kids we’ll have to count on next year.” That’s because five seniors — including Mullen and Jami Sharp, who combined for 22 points — will graduate after four years in a program that has racked up 100 wins (against 11 losses) during their high school career. “Everyone was excited because it was our last game,” Newland said, “but it was also real emotional for all the seniors. “We were tired, but we worked through it. Coach said we had to be ready, because they (the Kodiaks) always come out hard in the third quarter.” But it was the Red Devils who came out hardest, opening the second half with a 10-2 run that turned the game into a rout. The lead was never less than 11 the rest of the way as Cascade’s primary scoring threat, Cassie Merkley, missed 13 of her 16 field goal attempts and finished with 11 points. “We had a talk in the locker room (at halftime) about giving everything we had,” said Mullen, also led East Valley with seven rebounds. “We had to leave everything we had on the floor.
“And that’s what we did.”
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