Jemmett's jumper gives Vikings win

BREMERTON - Big Bend Community College (BBCC) freshman guard/forward Riley Jemmett almost didn't make the trip to face South Puget Sound and Olympic.

She suffered a concussion earlier in the week and was finally cleared to play Monday, a day before the team was scheduled to play the Clippers. After missing a week of practice, she struggled to find her shot against South Puget Sound and scored zero points.

Her struggles continued against the Olympic Rangers until head coach Preston Wilks offered some advice.

"She came over to me and she goes, 'Coach, what do you see? Do you see anything, you know, that I'm doing wrong with my shot?'" he said. "I said, 'no, maybe, you know, get in and get a little pull up jumper the next time you get a little closer."

Jemmett listened and drained a turnaround jumper with 2.5 seconds remaining to lift the Vikings to a 60-58 win in a back and forth game that saw 13 ties and 18 lead changes.

She totalled 10 points and eight rebounds for the game.

Big Bend moved to second place in the Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges with a record of 6-2.

BBCC jumped out to an early 10-3 lead, but the Rangers eventually cut into the Viking lead and pulled ahead with about 10 minutes remaining in the first half.

After dominating the glass against the Clippers on Tuesday, the Vikings struggled with the inside presence of Olympic's 6'1" freshman forward Bentae Hussins Wednesday. Hussins grabbed a game-high 11 rebounds and blocked one shot.

"Last night we didn't do a great job of keeping them off the glass and that kind of caused us to have a close game last night," Wilks said. "We're still not there yet, but we are showing signs of being able to figure out a way to keep people off the glass even though we're tiny."

Freshman guards Aubrie Vale and Elizabeth Larrew knocked down a pair of three-pointers late to bring the Vikings back before Jemmett eventually hit the game-winner.

Vale led the team in scoring with 14 points and also pulled down nine rebounds. Larrew added eight points along with three rebounds, two assists and a steal.

Sophomore forward Jessica Sorensen had a monster road trip coming one rebound shy of back-to-back double-doubles. Sorensen was the Vikings second leading scorer against Olympic with 11 points and grabbed nine rebounds.

"She's definitely got her confidence right now and we expect her to do that the rest of the year," Wilks said. "She's just so athletic. It's a hard matchup for a lot of the other teams to guard her with somebody big 'cause she's so athletic she can get by them."

Big Bend will have to play short handed for the rest of the season after the team learned that sophomore guard McKell Marlor tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) for the third time in as many years. McKell is the second Viking lost to an ACL tear. Fellow sophomore guard and team captain Shanelle Hemmert tore her ACL in practice before the season began.

The team will now have only eight players in its rotation.

"Right now we're just kind of saying, 'hey, eight is enough, eight is great,'" Wilks said. "We can't look over our shoulder and expect that McKell's going to come in and save us or look over our shoulder and expect Shanelle to come in and save us. We've got to figure out a way to pull together and look each other in the eyes and get it done with what we have right now."

The team returns to the court today to face Lower Columbia in the first round of the Bellevue Crossover Tournament.