Mead girls measuring up
Undersized team reaches 5A hoops semis
DENVER >> Darby Haley, Mead’s 5-foot-6 star point guard, is becoming quite a nightmare for post players trying to beat her inside.
For a second straight game in these Class 5A girls basketball playoffs, the junior seemed to climb an invisible stepladder to emphatically deny a 6-footer in the paint.
“I don’t know —” Haley said before she busted out laughing about her swat of Standley Lake’s 6-2 star, Taylin Serlen, on Friday. “I have no idea how that happened.”
Intensity fit for the big stage — led by a “laser focus” from Haley, as coach Mike Ward described it — the third-seeded Mavericks beat the 11th-seeded Gators handily in the morning quarterfinal at the Denver Coliseum, 54-41.
Back in Colorado’s version of the Final Four for the first time since going to its first semifinal in 2022, they’ll face the winner of defending champ No. 2 Roosevelt and No. 7 Montrose on Thursday back at the Coliseum. The Roughriders and Red Hawks played later Friday night.
“One of the things we’ve done really well this year is defend, and we’re going to have to defend even better the next game,” Ward said. “We did great today, we did great last week, but we’ll need to amp it up again.”
Haley’s career-high 25 points in her home gym during the round of 16 was enough to lead Mead from 13 down in the fourth to beat No. 14 Mountain View in overtime. That night, a roster with nobody above 5-10 did their best against a much-taller Addie Branscum who, despite some resistance, was dominant before fouling out late in regulation.
A week later, the Mavericks (224) were collectively better against the Gators (21-5), and Serlen, in a comfortable, wire-to-wire win.
They scored 28 points off 23 turnovers committed by Standley Lake. They also held Branscum’s future Regis University teammate
below her season averages (20.2 points, 10.4 rebounds) as Serlen finished with 15 points and six rebounds.
Early on, Haley set the tone, stuffing Serlen inside before burying a 3-pointer on the other end. She finished with 17 points and was credited with three steals as Mead went up by double digits by the end of the first and never led by less than eight the rest of the way.
Caroline Kron added 13 points, Gianna Wurth eight.
“To get here again, it’s amazing,” Wurth, the lone senior on the varsity roster, said. “At the beginning of the year, nobody thought we were going to be good. We lost two of our leading scorers and no one thought we’d get back to the Final Four. We just worked hard every day, every game.”