WNCC women fall by two to No. 17 Otero

                 The Western Nebraska Community College women’s basketball team fought tooth and nail against the No. 17 Otero Junior College Rattlers, fighting back from 18-point second half deficit to narrowly fall 57-55 in a contest that saw both teams battle strong defensively.

                WNCC, which trailed 43-25 at one time in the second half, went on a 17-0 run to close to 43-42. WNCC kept playing strong in the waning moments taking their first lead since midway in the first half at 54-53 on a Samantha Sanders 3-pointer with 1:42 left.

                WNCC coach Dave Harnish was proud of the way his team played in the second half as they easily could have gave up trailing by nearly 20 points to the unbeaten Rattlers.

                “For one we were depleted and I thought we played well to start the game and then the last six minutes of the first half we had a defensive lapse. The big difference in the game was turnovers, where we turned the ball over 12 times in the first half and only four times the second half,” he said. “I thought we were very good in the half court the second half. We got some rhythm going and we got solid on defense. We came back and had a chance to win the game. It is hard to talk to the girls after the game because we played so hard and got back into it. We are proud of the way they fought back.”

                In fact, the Cougar women played tough for the entire game with a depleted bench because of injuries. WNCC held a 12-6 lead early on a Jessica Aratani bucket before the Rattlers went on an 8-0 run to lead 14-12. Otero pushed the lead to 25-14 before taking a 30-19 lead into the locker room.

                Otero came out in the second half red hot, starting out with a 13-6 run that saw the No. 17 team in the nation lead 43=25 with 13 minutes left. WNCC, instead of folding, applied the defensive pressure and went on a 17-0 run that spanned nearly six minutes to cut the deficit to one, 43-42. Otero finally stopped the run with a free throw and then pushed the lead to 48-42.

                It was short-lived, though, as the Cougars went on a 12-5 run that was spearheaded by nine points from Samantha Sanders. Sanders nailed a 3-pointer with 3:40 to play to knot the score at 51-51. A couple minutes later, the sophomore from Denver drained a trey from the top of the key to give the Cougars the 54-53 lead. Otero’s Aubry Boehme put the Rattlers ahead for good with a bucket with under a minute to play for the win.

                Harnish said the second half run they made was because his team switched to a zone defense.

                “We went from a man-to-man to zone and they seemed to have problems against the zone and weren’t knocking some shots down,” he said. “I thought we just executed better offensively and took the right shots, drew some fouls and got tougher as the game went along.”

                Neither team shot the ball well. WNCC was 36 percent from the field and 25 percent (3 of 12) from the 3-point area. WNCC’s defense also stifled Otero to just 39 percent shooting including a 5 of 25 shooting from beyond the arc. WNCC stayed in the contest from the free throw line where they were 20 of 28, while Otero was 10 of 16.

                WNCC was led in scoring by Sanders with 12 points and four assists. Aratani finished with nine points and 10 rebounds, while Lisa Durden had nine points as well.

                WNCC will be back in action Saturday afternoon when they host Trinidad State Junior College in another subregion contest. Tip-off is slated for 1 p.m.

               

Otero (16-0)                       30 27 – 57

WNCC (13-4)                      19 36 – 55

OTERO JUNIOR COLLEGE

Ellie Carter 3, Taylor Rock 11, Iiaisaane Lo’amanu 5, Erin Foster 3, Tonje Milde 8, Fernanda Mensilla 8, Sarah Pigg 7, Aubry Boehme 12.

WESTERN NEBRASKA
Samantha Sanders 12, Leona Garrett 5, Lisa Durden 9, ChaCha Ofoegbu 8, Idil Ozbayrak 4, Kelsey Doddridge 8, Jessica Aratani 9.