Second-half surge carries Othello past Lady Jacks

OTHELLO — After two nip-and-tuck battles on their respective home courts, it was safe to assume Othello and Quincy would be in for another doozy on Tuesday night in their Central Washington Athletic Conference (CWAC) District Tournament play-in game on Tuesday night.

For one half it seemed once again the host  Lady Huskies would be embroiled in a down-to-the-wire slugfest with the Lady Jacks as Quincy led 21-20 at halftime.

Then Othello took a deeper look inside.

Behind a stronger inside attack and a blistering 16-0 run that broke the game open, Othello stormed off to a resounding 61-40 win and advanced to a CWAC district quarterfinal on Friday at Ellensburg.

“We had to make better choices on our passes and we were a lot more patient,” Othello coach Laurie Stickel said. “If we were going to play wirh them we had to work the ball around, be patient, and got the ball inside. We also had to stop them defensively.”

They also were aided by the play of senior Kylee Mollotte who decided to make the second-half her own personal playground.

Mollotte hit an array of inside and mid-range shots to help Othello during their pivotal third-quarter 16-0 blitz which gave her squad a 38-23 lead with just under two minutes to play.

“Christine (Kirkwood) had moved down so the angle was easier when they guarded us down low it forced the wing defender to step out more on her,” Mollotte said. “It opened me up with one defender behind me.”

In the first half the Lady Huskies (10-11) were making entry passes from a longer angle which allowed Quincy defenders to deflect, steal, or deny passes into the triple Othello interior threats of Mollotte, Kirkwood, and Tiffany Martinez.

“We have to be able to use our posts,” Stickel said. “We try to plan our offense around those three and Quincy played good defense we can’t take that away from them. We just began to execute our offenses much better when we mixed and matched up with their defense they were showing.”

No matter how well Quincy (8-13) worked to keep the three Othello players in check it became a matter of choosing which lesser of evils would be left to roam free.

“We tried to focus on those three main girls especially Kirkwood since in the first two games she had a lot of points and I thought we did a good job limiting her,” Quincy coach Cully Donovan said. “But Kylee really took over in the second half. Not a whole lot you can do when she’s scoring inside and hitting threes. She’s tough to guard.”

Quincy broke the Othello spurt on a Dayanna Lopez free throw and trailed 40-29 going into the fourth quarter.

Despite being within range of one last comeback the Lady Jacks’ recent shooting woes remained prevalent and Othello was able to ice the win in the fourth quarter.

“For the last few weeks we’ve been having trouble scoring points,” Donovan said. “We get good looks they just aren’t falling. It’s hard because we put ourselves in a position to score and what can you do? It’s a matter of making them.”

The same could be said for Quincy’s first half, where their offense was humming and opening the floor for multiple open inside and outside looks but would see appoximately a dozen uncontested shots miss the mark.

“I thought we could have been up more at halftime,” Donovan said. “We had some good looks and they weren’t falling for us.”

Quincy shot only 21 percent from the field.

Senior guard Jacklyn Lerma hit the last of her three three-pointers in the first half with less than a minute left before halftime to give Quincy the 21-20 halftine lead.

Then after halftime it became an interior offensive clinic by the Huskies.

“They were able to get the ball to their big girls in the blocks,” Donovan said. “In the second half they easily got the ball in the block and those girls are tough down there. They’re good.”

Kirkwood chipped in with 14 points and Martinez scored 10 points.

Dayanna Lopez finished her Quincy career with 15 points, 10 rebound, and six steals against Othello, while Marisol Lopez added eight points, 11 rebounds, and four steals.

“The good thing about this year was we were competitive every night,” Donovan said. “A lot of our wins were close wins and it was fun to watch the girls this year. It’s tough thing about tonight. I coached seven girls for four years and its tough to close the door on their careers and they should be proud of how they played. They played as hard as they could it just didn’t end in our favor tonight.”

Some may have thought things would have turned out differently after Othello wrapped up their regular season with a disappointing 60-53 loss at previously winless-Selah this weekend.

But the Lady Huskies perservered.

“That game was not our team and we hadn’t played like that all season,” Mollotte said. “It was a downer. But we reviewed how it happened and in practice we said we had to let it go and we pulled together and got on the same page and flushed that one down the toilet. We knew we needed a win.”

One win later and now Othello travel to Ellensburg two wins away from a state playoff berth.

“At halftime coach said it’s a game and that they aren’t giving up and asked us if we were,” Mollotte said. “We told her nope.”