Rez Christian moves on to semis
Cougars contain Pagosa, will face Holy Family next Friday
DENVER >> Playing in the spacious confines of the Denver Coliseum can be intimidating, especially for a team that hasn’t played there before.
Such was the scenario for the Resurrection Christian girls basketball team, which was playing in their first Great 8 as a Class 4A team on Saturday.
RCS junior point guard Olivia Klein didn’t have any trouble quickly adapting to the arena as she scored 14 first-half points, including four 3-pointers, and the
Cougars held off a late charge by Pagosa Springs to clinch their first Final Four appearance in Class 4A with a 53-44 victory over the Pirates.
The No. 4 seed Cougars (23-3) advanced to face No. 1 Holy Family next Friday. The winner of that game will play for the 4A state title. The Tigers are the defending 4A state champions.
But before the Cougars could think about that, they had to get past a Pagosa Springs team that they defeated in the first round of the playoffs last season.
Klein helped them get off to a good start offensively.
“I thought it was really fun,”
Klein said of shooting in the Coliseum. “It’s different. At the end of the day, it’s mostly memory, so it was really fun.”
The game was tight early on as the teams traded leads until the Cougars used an 8-2 run to take a 16-11 lead. Six of those points during that run came from a pair of 3-pointers by Klein.
However, the Pirates scored the final six points of the quarter and took a 17-16 lead after the opening period.
Then the Cougars put on a defensive clinic in the second quarter, which allowed them to pull away from the Pirates.
“We started off in our press, obviously, like we do most games and they did a great job of breaking it and finally we stopped being stubborn and got back and played great man defense,” RCS head coach Jason Conrad said. “That’s been our identity throughout the season. We said the teams that play to their identity are going to be the most successful down the stretch.”
RCS held Pagosa Springs to only two points in the period, both coming on free throws, and took a 29-19 lead at halftime.
In the game-turning quarter, the Cougars got another eight points from Klein, six of those coming on her other two 3-pointers.
“You have to play four quarters and I think we went in at halftime thinking, ‘OK, we just need to finish. We need to play two more complete quarters’,” Klein said. “We knew we had to do that. We came out and played good defense and we did it. I’m super proud of my team, super proud of what we accomplished.”
The Cougars extended their lead in the third quarter, outscoring the Pirates 17-11 to go ahead 46-30 with one quarter to play.
Klein’s focus in the second half turned from scoring her own points to helping her teammates get some. The Pirates also turned up their defensive effort against her.
One of the beneficiaries of the focus on Klein was junior center Lysette Baatz, who found herself free under the basket multiple times to finish with a season-high 15 points.
The Pirates weren’t going to go quietly. Despite trailing by as many as 16 in the third quarter, they made three fourth-quarter 3-pointers to pull within 50-44 at one point.
A 3 by Mackenzie Flikkema stopped the Pirates’ barrage and the Cougars came away with the ninepoint victory.
“It’s a little nerve-racking, honestly,” Baatz said. “We just stayed on them and we put our best defender on their best players and we shut them down and we hung in there until the very end.”
Now the Cougars get a rematch with the top-seeded Tigers. The teams met at RCS early in the season and Holy Family came away with a six-point victory. The Cougars led by one going into the fourth quarter of that game.
It is a rematch the team and Conrad are excited for and have been looking forward to.
“This is what we wanted to be in from the very beginning is another box for us to check off to get to the final four,” Conrad said. “We played them early in the year. It was a great game then at our place. They do have a little more experience down here than we do, but I know we are going to have a great week of practice. The girls are confident and we’re excited to play them.”