The Garden City Telegram

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Lady Busters claim narrow win

Published 2/6/2012 in Sports

By ADAM HOLT

aholt@gctelgram.com

Alaura Sharp was still excited about her team's win, even over an hour after the game ended.

Who could blame her?

The Garden City Community College women's basketball coach saw her team scrap out a hard-fought 49-48 win over Butler to sweep the season series. Both games came down to the wire and both times, the Lady Broncbusters managed to leave the court happily.

Garden City improved to 14-9 and 6-3 in the Jayhawk Conference Western Division. Butler fell to 14-9 and 3-6 in conference play.

The Grizzlies scored with 3:18 left in the game to take a 48-47 lead and wouldn't score for the rest of the game. Tamara Jones made a jump shot to score the last of her team-high 17 points and put the Busters up 49-48.

"I was really proud of our defense the last three minutes — they didn't score in the last three minutes of the game," Sharp said. "When we went up 49-48, that was the last basket of the game, and fortunately, we made the last one of the game."

Butler's Jamillah Bonner, who had a game-high 20 points, had a chance to put the Grizzlies up at the free throw line with 12.5 seconds left, but missed both shots. It was eerily reminiscent of the teams' last meeting, where Bonner had a chance to break a tie with 7.1 seconds left in regulation, but missed the front end of a 1-and-1.

"Everybody's going to talk about the two free throws that Jamillah missed at the end of the game," Butler head coach Mike Helmer said. "Was it a play that would have helped us? Absolutely. But there were 100 plays before. With that being said, going 10-of-28 from the free throw line on the night, and lose by one, that's hard to swallow."

As soon as Bonner had drawn the foul, Sharp called a timeout.

"I thought making her think about it — she was 1-of-5 for the game, have to listen to her coach talk about, 'If you make one, if you make two, if we miss both,' and just having to hear all that, I thought we could maybe win by the mental side of that, and it worked in our favor," she said.

The Busters managed to grab the rebound on Bonner's second miss and Jasmine Christmas — who Sharp praised for her play and rebounding in the game — was fouled by Bonner with 1.7 seconds left. Christmas missed the first shot of a 1-and-1 and the Grizzlies, who were out of timeouts, were forced to heave a full-court desperation shot that missed.

Garden City committed the last of its 24 turnovers with an offensive foul called on point guard Mikayla Skidmore with 34.4 seconds left. Helmer called a timeout and drew up a play for the Grizzlies to try and take the lead. Instead, his offense didn't execute and he was forced to call his last timeout just 11 seconds later — to have his team try to run the same play.

"Once that play started to break down and the girl picked up her dribble, I was scared we would turn it over and never even get a shot," Helmer said. "The fact that we couldn't run a play that we run every day all the time, that just blew my mind. Scoring for us is so hard that I didn't want to pass up an opportunity."

The timeout proved costly, as Butler couldn't stop the clock after Christmas' free throw miss at the end of the game, spoiling a stingy Grizzlies defensive effort.

Garden City had a difficult time all game getting the ball into the paint, contributing to the Busters shooting just 34.8 percent from the field. Sharp's squad returned the favor, holding the Grizzlies to 30 percent shooting from the field.

Bonner was tough to stop, but Garden City locked down the rest of Butler's scoring; no other Grizzly scored more than six points. In the teams' last meeting, Butler's Samantha Satterlee hurt Garden City with a flurry of second-half 3-pointers. This meeting, she had just four total points. Still, Bonner almost willed her team to a win.

"When a kid plays that hard and she's so quick — she's a really tough matchup — it's hard to rotate, take a charge, because she does a good job of going around the defense," Sharp said of Bonner. "The difference between this game and last game is they had a player step up and make four threes last game. We did a lot better job shutting down those players late in the game."

Garden City heads to Hutchinson for a 5:30 p.m. game on Wednesday.

See boxscore in Scoreboard, Page B2.

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