Doves take second straight city title
Cache Waters scores 20 to lead No. 5 Western past No. 11 Poly, 45-40, in OT
With Western’s go-to-player, Jasmen Walton, on the bench after getting shaken up late in regulation of Saturday night’s Baltimore City Division I girls basketball championship against archrival Poly, Cache Waters stepped into the primary role.
The junior guard hit a layup off a steal with 16 seconds left in overtime and then added a follow shot with 1.1 second left to seal the No. 5 Doves’ second straight city title with a 45-40 victory over the No. 11 Engineers at Coppin State.
Waters finished with 20 points, including 12 in the second half and overtime.
“My coach said, ‘Take it to the hoop,’ so I took it to the basket and my teammates, we finished strong,” Waters said. “It’s cool [to win the championship], but it feels numb. This is what we came here for. We worked for this.”
The Doves (18-5) led by eight points early, but the Engineers (15-7) bounced back to tie the game at the half on Dasia Townes’ 3-pointer.
The second half featured three ties and three lead changes, but the Doves took control from the last basket in the fourth quarter. Walton, a second-team All-Metro guard who scored her 1,000th point earlier in the week, was shaken up when she hit the floor after going for a rebound in the final seconds of regulation.
She said after the game she was fine, but with her on the bench, the Doves had to play some of their best team ball of the game. Naya Delaney started overtime with a three-point play and Destiny Hawkins banked in a short jumper to give the Doves a 41-26 lead 1:30 into the four-minute overtime period.
Poly’s Tylea Galloway cut the lead with a free throw and Jada Gross, who led the Engineers with 10 points, made a 3-pointer to pull them within 41-40 with 1:01 to go. But in a game in which Poly played a lot of catch-up, it couldn’t quite make it all the way back. It didn’t manage another shot.
In the third quarter, the Engineers led three times, first at 32-28 after Deierra Weems scored back-to-back. Poly turned the ball over on three of its next four possessions and Makayla Pickens fed Kobie ScottPearson for a basket, stole the ball and tied the game at 32.
Townes hit a free throw to push ahead, but Delaney answered with two for a 34-33 Western lead. Free throws from Weems and Cache Wilson gave the Engineers their last lead at 36-34 with 34.1 seconds left in regulation.
The Engineers had to rebound from a psychological hole when they didn’t hit a field goal until 1:05 remained in the first half. They kept pace from the free-throw line though, hitting 13 of 21 in the half.
The victory was the fifth straight for the Doves over their next-door neighbor. They won the regular-season game, 52-42. Poly’s last win came in the 2015 city final, which was the Engineers’ second straight championship.
Against a Poly team that kept coming back, Western coach Tasha Townsend said she was especially pleased with her team’s resilience.
“We just didn’t give up. We just didn’t want to give up,” Townsend said. “We came to win and that’s what we wanted to do — we wanted to finish it. We just played a little harder [down the stretch]. We just kind of let everything go. We let the girls go, we let the emotions go and we just played.”
The teams will move on to the sectional playoffs later this week with the Doves aiming for a Class 4A state title and the Engineers, who were state finalists last season, in Class 3A. P—Wilson 1, Gross 10, Porter 3, Weems 9, Galloway 3, Jones 2, Townes 9, Ayers 3. Totals 10 18-29 40. W—Walton 6, Johnson 2, Pickens 2, Waters 20, Jackson 2, Scott-Pearson 2, Delaney 5, Hawkins 6. Totals 16 10-22 45. Half: W, 20-17. Reg. 36-36.