El Dorado’s Amyiah Williams scored on a driving layup with eight seconds remaining and the Lady Wildcats ended the game with a defensive stand and downed Mount St. Mary’s 65-63 in an exciting season opener Tuesday at Wildcat Arena.
It was a successful debut for Coach Jae Kell, who took over the program from Destinee Rogers late in the spring.
“It feels good to get that first win under our belt,” said Kell. “The girls worked all preseason hard to have a season they’re wanting to be proud of. That’s a good start to it.”
El Dorado led by 14 late in the third before the Belles went on a 12-0 run. Mount St. Mary’s tied the game 63-63 on a 3-pointer by Kaitlin Tarini with 17.2 seconds left to play.
The Lady Wildcats got the ball to Williams, who drove the right side of the court. Taking advantage of a defense afraid to foul, she pushed her way to the basket and kissed a shot off the glass with eight seconds left.
The Belles hurried the ball back down the court with Tarini getting all the way to the basket. But she had the ball deflected out of bounds with the clock showing 0.8 seconds. After a timeout, the teams went back on the court and the officials adjusted the clock to 1.6 seconds.
The additional time didn’t please El Dorado.
“There is a big difference. It made me a little bit nervous,” said Kell. “With .8, you can really only get a tip-in. With 1.6, you can almost run a whole play. But our kids executed perfectly. They did exactly what we said. We told them if they could touch the ball, touch it so the clock would start and then go grab it.”
Inbounding the ball under their own basket, the Belles tried to lob a pass to Cat Althoff. The Lady Cats got a paw on the ball, however, and the horn sounded as the players fought for possession.
Althoff, a skilled post, led Mount St. Mary’s with 23 points but was held scoreless over the final four minutes of the game. Kell credited the defense of LaDiamond Maker.
“We put our best post defender on her. She was the leading scorer last year so we knew that’s who they would focus on. That was our main focus in practice last week,” the coach said of Althoff.
“We had great guard defense. Our guards put pressure on them all night. We had a deep bench. Everybody that came on the court produced and played our game. I was really proud.”
Sophomore Kalese Moseley led El Dorado with 17 points with Maker and Tajah Edmondson adding 11 and 10, respectively. Eleven Lady Wildcats played in the game.
Tarini and Hagen Smith scored 13 and 11, respectively, for Mount St. Mary’s.
The Lady Wildcats gained control early, building a 21-11 lead after one quarter and a 38-28 advantage at the half. El Dorado built a 53-37 cushion with 1:58 left in the third.
But the Belles would score the next 12 points, capped by Althoff’s 3-pointer. Maker hit a pull-up jumper to stop the run for El Dorado, which never trailed in the game.
The Lady Wildcats went up 61-54 after a pair of free throws by Williams with 2:37 left to play. Free throws by Maker and Williams made the margin 63-56 with 1:24 remaining.
The Belles kept fighting. Two free throws apiece by Tarini and Millie Allgood cut the margin to three. El Dorado went 0-for-2 at the line with 34.1 seconds left, allowing Mount St. Mary’s to execute an out of bounds play for Tarini, who drained the game-tying 3-pointer from the corner.
“They hit some good shots, which we knew they had some good shooters. Our defense relaxed just a little bit with that lead. Basketball is a game of runs and they had theirs. We were able to stop it and cut it just a little short,” said Kell, who singled out the play of her point guard.
“Tajah Edmondson had a great game as a point guard. This was one of her first games playing point. She did a really good job at controlling the team, controlling the tempo and doing what we asked her to do.”