Butte women advance to Elite Eight, to play Cypress today

The hopes of keeping the Butte College women’s basketball team’s season alive started to diminish following the first half against Folsom Lake College.

The top-seeded Roadrunners were outscored 32-28, outrebounded 19-9 and faced with one of their toughest deficits all season.

But a second half flipof-the-switch carried the Roadrunners to a 74-63 victory over the No. 8 Falcons in Saturday’s California Community College Athletic Association Northern Regional final. The win sends Butte to the Elite Eight for the second straight year. The Roadrunners will take on Cypress College at 5 p.m. Friday at West Hills College Lemoore.

“I told them (at halftime) we’ve got 20 minutes if you want to save your season and continue this magical ride,” said Butte head coach Tyler Newton. “Championships don’t happen without adversity. You have to push through. That’s what we did.”

After being tied 15-all at the end of the first quarter, the Falcons put together a run to take the lead. Alysa Lopez hit a jumper then an Emily Ko block led to a Eva Graf layup between two Roadrunners for a 21-17 advantage over the hosts.

Later, a 3-point play from Graf put the Falcons (23-7) ahead 32-25.

“They were super physical with us. Way more physical than a lot of the teams we’ve played,” said Butte sophomore Meghan Weinrich. “So we embraced that in the second half. Took the contact and were still able to make plays.”

Weinrich scored 21 points with 11 rebounds, four steals and two blocks.

The Falcons committed four team fouls in under the first two minutes of the third quarter, propelling the Roadrunners (26-3) to the lead.

Sanaya Shrader, the 6-foot-1 sophomore center from Corning, started the third quarter by grabbing an offensive rebound and drawing a foul in the paint. Shrader hit both shots from the line to pull Butte within 32-30.

Shortly after, Shrader grabbed another offensive board and drew a foul to go 1-of-2 from the line. Shrader finished with a game-high 23 points and hit 11-of-15 free throws.

“We knew we had to come out a lot more aggressive.

We knew that the first three to four minutes coming back from halftime, that was the most important,” Shrader said. “We knew we had to punch back and that’s exactly what we did.”

A Falcons’ turnover came courtesy of a Jordan Arreloa steal that she converted into an open layup to give Butte a 33-32 advantage. Following a Folsom Lake timeout, a Weinrich steal led to

Tait drawing a foul in the paint and hitting both free throws.