With 52 seconds left of overtime, senior forward Madison Treece moves the ball to her teammate. Winding down the clock of their tied game, the Lady Bruins desperately look for an opportunity to topple the No. 1 ranked JCHS Jays from their 39-39 stalemate.
With a swift movement the ball exchanges from hand to hand until Treece sees teammate, junior guard Katey Klucking, rushing towards the basket. With a decisive lay-up, Klucking puts the nail biting fans into an electric frenzy over the 41-39 victory.
“It was an awesome feeling, hitting that shot,” Klucking said. “I only got it because Payton McCalister handled the ball so well and Madison made that crazy pass to me. The plan was to run our offense while running the clock and look for an opportunity to score. It obviously worked.”
Throughout the course of the game, head coach Jill Nagel, had the girls fight for every possession, every point, and every rebound.
“It’s such a low scoring game that it feels like every possession has you hanging onto a cliff by your fingernails,” Nagel said. “Every basket was so big so obviously we tried to get every point we could and be as aggressive as possible for those baskets.”
With the Lady Bruins top scorer, senior guard Elle Brown getting injured only 12 minutes into the game, the rest of the ladies had to step up and make plays. Klucking and Treece did just that, scoring 17 and 13 points respectively.
“The game was a lot of fun, even though there’s a lot of pressure and everyone is so hyped up, it’s good to have those experiences because, ultimately, they make you better,” Treece said. “We definitely have some things to work on, but overall we played well as a team and left everything on the court.”
With the enormous victory, beating the number 1 school in the state, the Bruins look forward with anticipation toward their future games.
“It’s always good to get a win,” Nagel said. “We really needed it tonight, coming off two losses, and [JHCS] are a great team. We had to grind it out, and it wasn’t pretty, but like i told the girls, we did what we had to to make it out with the victory.”