Olympia wins by a Hair
The score was tied with five seconds on the clock when Taylor Hair caught a pass, spun around and tossed it up against the backboard. Score.
Hair’s final basket gave her a team-high 14 points and advanced Olympia (21-6) to the girls basketball region semifinals for the first time since 2011 with a 42-40 quarterfinal victory over Cypress Creek (10-13) on Thursday.
The Titans will travel to Boone for a region semifinal at 7 Tuesday night.
“We’re picking up the steam,” said Olympia coach Robert Carmody. “A win is a win is a win. It was ugly, we turned the ball over probably 20 times tonight. Cypress Creek fought us hard, They slowed the game down. They had a really good game plan against us.”
The Titans had 17 turnovers, a big reason why the game almost slipped away from them late in the third quarter when the Bears went on a seven-point run to take a 30-27 lead.
Tacaya Bryant led Cypress Creek with 16 points. Kaley Schmick had nine.
The score was tied again, at 32, in the fourth quarter when Hair and Trenisha Johnson hit back-to-back 3s. MacKenzie Loos followed them with a layup that gave the Titans their largest lead of the night, 40-34.
“The 3 ball won it for us and the turnovers almost lost it for us,” Carmody said.
After Hair’s game-winning shot, Cypress Creek had one last chance with .3 seconds on the clock to tie the game and force overtime.
Giselle Cardel was on the foul line. With Olympia’s student section roaring right behind the basket, both shots bounced off the rim.