Courtney Davis missed a wide-open 3-point shot from along the baseline that would have been the winning basket here Wednesday night, but the shot rimmed out at the buzzer and Walla Walla and Blue Mountain went to overtime.
But the 5-foot-10 freshman from Deer Park, Wash., didn’t get her dauber down. Instead, Davis scored nine of her 13 points in the five-minute extra session and lifted the Warriors to a thrilling 87-83 victory over the Timberwolves in a Northwest Athletic Conference women’s basketball game.
“Courtney in overtime was everything,” Warriors coach Bobbi Hazeltine said. “She totally took over. She comes off the bench for us and is a tough matchup because at 5-10 she can still play outside, and she can shoot the ball.”
It was a gut-check comeback victory for the Warriors as they trailed 36-28 at halftime, by as many as 15 points in the second half and were still 12 back with five minutes remaining in regulation. Karli McHone’s 3-point basket with 46 seconds on the clock knotted the score at 69-69.
But, as Hazeltine said, “a lot of stuff happened after that.”
Mar’Shay Moore, the Timberwolves’ star who led all scorers with 40 points, missed a 3-point attempt with 20 seconds remaining, and the Warriors rebounded. The Warriors’ Paige Vincent drew a foul, but she missed the front end of a one-and-one opportunity and Blue Mountain had the ball back with 11 seconds on the clock.
The Warriors were then able to trap Moore, who was called for traveling and Walla Walla got the ball back with 4.3 seconds to go.
“We ran a perfect play, got the ball to Courtney in the corner and she had a great shot,” Hazeltine said. “It didn’t fall, but she had a ton of points in overtime.”
Still nothing came easy for the Warriors.
They found themselves trailing by four points, 75-71, midway through the overtime period before McHone drained a 3-pointer to make it a one-point game. After a pair of free throws rebuilt a three-point Blue Mountain lead, Davis knocked down a 3-pointer while drawing a foul. Her free throw completed a rare four-point play and gave Walla Walla a 78-77 lead.
After an empty Blue Mountain possession, Davis struck again. Her second 3-pointer of overtime boosted Walla Walla’s lead to 81-77 with 1:41 remaining.
Blue Mountain’s Riley Gerlinger sliced the lead in half with a pair of free throws and the Warriors missed at their end. But Davis rebounded and found her way to the basket for two points and an 83-79 lead with 28 seconds left.
Seven seconds later, Moore responded with a 3-point basket that cut WWCC’s lead to a single point. But the Timberwolves were then forced to foul, and Kennedy Corrigan sank two free throws to make it 85-82. After another Blue Mountain miss, Bailey Nygaard drew a foul, and her two free throws put the Warriors in front 87-82 and sealed the victory with 11.4 seconds to play.
McHone scored 27 points and Corrigan 26 as the Warriors clinched the Eastern Division’s No. 1 seed to next month’s NWAC Championships in Kennewick. It will be the Warriors 15th consecutive appearance in the tournament.
At 11-2 in the Eastern Region and 20-5 overall, Walla Walla leads Columbia Basin by one game heading into Saturday afternoon’s regular-season finale between the Warriors and the Hawks in the Dietrich Dome. Game time is 2 p.m.
Columbia Basin (10-3, 18-9) can earn a share of the East title by defeating Walla Walla. The Warriors are assured of the No. 1 seed on the strength of the region’s tiebreaker system.
And being the No. 1 seed, Hazeltine said, is crucial.
“Our No. 2 seed has to play at 10 o’clock at night that first day of the tournament,” Hazeltine said. “Our No. 1 seed plays at 10 in the morning. We’ll take that morning slot over that late-night slot any time.”
