Forced to play more minutes than usual because of teammates' foul trouble, Grace Kreider admitted she was exhausted during the final seconds of regulation. Solanco's senior guard made sure she didn't have to work overtime. Kreider drilled a 15-foot jumper with two seconds remaining to lift the Mules to a Solanco Holiday Tournament championship with a 39-37 triumph over Red Lion in the title game Saturday, December 28. Kreider's winning bucket came after the Mules had caused a five-second violation on a Lions' inbounds pass with 15 seconds to go.
After two timeouts, Solanco's initial play began to unravel and Kreider did not think she would have an opportunity to hit the game-winner. "I totally expected Jenna (Dombach), my teammate, to shoot it, then she just dished it to me," said Kreider, who was named the tournament's Most Valuable Player. "I was like, 'Please, Jesus, help this to go in'. And it swished and I was like, "Here we go! We did it!'." Solanco coach Chad McDowell said the plan all along was to give Kreider a chance to take the final shot. "Coming out of the timeout we were going to isolate Grace to go one-on-one," McDowell said. "We were going to run the 'one-four high (screen)' that we had run in the second half. They came out in a zone. Once they came out in a zone, I called our play to get Jess (Cabrera) the ball in the corner. As soon as the ball came in, they changed to man. At that point, we tried to clear it down, and get Grace isolated. The play was for Grace to isolate and try to get to the rim. If she doesn't get to the rim, she's going to have shooters on the wings, and she's going to have somebody down low. Jade (Eshelman) was going to set a screen for a her and we'd have a drop down pass going into the post. That didn't materialize because of the way they played their defense. They gave us a different look than what I expected. I should have known that. He's a great coach. I didn't process it the way I should have, but we got lucky and Grace hit a big shot." Down 20-13 at halftime, things looked bleak for the Mules. "We played to their style," McDowell said. "We knew they didn't want the game out of the 30s. That's the way they play. They play hard-nosed, up-in-your-face, man-to man defense. Over in York County, they let a lot more go with the hand-checking and things. We weren't used to that physicality at the beginning. We really had to adjust as the game went on and be more strong with the ball, and limit our turnovers. In the first half, we made some really bad passes. We didn't make the good pass when we had it. Things I call bad turnovers. Some of our bad turnovers led into their points. Luckily, our defense stepped up and played well. We hadn't played a lot of man-to-man defense this year and we played pretty much the entire second half in man-to-man. We did a little bit of halfcourt man-to-man, a little bit of fullcourt man-to-man. We're primarily a zone team, but we knew we couldn't go zone with that group they had on the court. They have good shooters. They can pound the ball into the post players. They're well-coached. That's a good team we played." It got worse before it became better. Solanco starting guard Aleksa Burger picked up her fourth foul 61 seconds into the third quarter. The Mules trailed by 10 before reserve guard Paige Phillips scored, but then Phillips was whistled for her fourth foul 50 seconds after Burger suffered a similar situation. "With the foul trouble we got into, we lost our rotation," said McDowell. "With Kara (McClune) being out because of hand surgery, we were a little limited on our rotation, and I did ask Grace to play a few more minutes, same with Jess. Ilynd Rapant stepped in and did a good job with a few minutes in the third and fourth quarters. We had some major foul trouble and some players, who had to step up off the bench, did. They gave us some quality minutes at quality times. That's the true character of our team. We're all about the team. We're all about everybody stepping up. It doesn't matter who scores. It doesn't matter who gets the points, it's at the end we have more points on the scoreboard than the other team. One of our mottos this year is 'Play for one another.' They played for one another. It didn't matter who scored. It didn't matter who got the last shot. Somebody was going to step up and hit it and it just happened to be Grace." Solanco still had work to do before Kreider's big shot. The Mules sliced the 10-point deficit down to two entering the fourth quarter. Kreider hit a three-pointer to start the final period before Red Lion responded with five straight points to go up 33-29 with 5:31 left. Burger made two free throws and Kreider connected on another three-pointer to supply Solanco with a 34-33 edge with 4:33 remaining. The Mules went on top 37-36 on a conventional three-point play by Eshelman before the Lions tied it on a free throw with 3:20 to go. Red Lion got possession with 2:17 left and elected to play for the final shot. The Lions managed to hold on to the ball for 2:02 before taking a timeout. That's when the Mules' defense rose to the occasion and prevented Red Lion from inbounding the ball in time. "That was huge to get a five-second call there," said McDowell. "We had everybody covered. That was big. We talk about denying the pass, don't let them catch. We had Jade back as a safety to look for any cutters that were coming. They didn't have a whole lot of movement which made it easier on us. They didn't space. They stayed rather congested in there, which was to our benefit. We were able to keep them where we wanted them. I actually thought the pass back to the backcourt was open, but they never made it and we got the five-second count." Solanco's last possession may not have gone as smoothly as originally formulated, but Kreider fought off her fatigue. "I was very tired," Kreider said. "Paige usually subs in the rotation, so does Leks. That hurt us a lot but we pulled through." Kreider finished with a team-high 11 points. Dombach delivered eight and Eshelman added seven. Solanco has captured two of its last three holiday tournaments and entered 2019 on a high note. "It was a good team win," McDowell said. "Finishes off the first half of the season. We're 7-3, right where we need to be at this point. The three losses we have are to really good teams, Lancatser Catholic, Elco, and Dallstown, so we've played some really good teams and we're sitting really good right now." In the opening round, Solanco walloped Penn Manor, 67-41. Kreider poured in 22 and Jess Cabrera collected 21. Jenna Dombach delivered 12 and Aleksa Burger chipped in six. Ahead 13-11, the Mules outscored the Comets 29-10 in the second quarter to break the game wide open. Solanco swept the two JV games in the tournament. On Friday, December 28, the Mules defeated Penn Manor 30-13. Ilynd Rapant recorded 10 points and Paige Phillips added five. The next day, Solanco topped Red Lion, 31-26. Angela Cylc contributed seven points and Nikki Trout and Sammi Jackson each added six. Comments are closed.
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