OGDEN – Sometimes even championship teams need a little, um, motivation.
Snow Canyon coach Wade Jensen fired up his team at halftime and the Lady Warriors responded by blowing out Delta in the second half in a 53-36 quarterfinal win.
“We went in for halftime and we got a good talking to,” Amy Harris said. “Coach just told us that it wasn’t going to be handed to us and to just go for it and put it out there.”
It was a 22-21 game at intermission, but Snow Canyon shut the Rabbits down in the third quarter, allowing just four points.
“At this point in the season, we’re just happy to move on,” SC coach Wade Jensen said. “They were a very scrappy team. We just had to get back to basics and play better defense.”
Even with BYU-bound Harris on the floor, the Lady Warriors managed to stay very balanced. Eight different players scored at least three points in the game. Harris had 12 points, as did Ashlee Nyborg, but most of the team got involved.
“Our bench played so good for us today,” Harris said. “They were the total game-changer for us.”
Megan Leavitt didn’t have an especially great shooting night, but the Snow Canyon center had 10 rebounds and two blocked shots to go with her seven points.
“We were very proud of the bench,” Leavitt said. “They came out and helped a lot. The coach let us hear it a bit at halftime. We pledged our hearts.”
The Warriors, who ended up as the third seed from Region 9 after a late-season loss to Cedar, ran circles around the one-seed Rabbits in the second half and held all but one Delta player out of double-figures.
SC, now 18-6, plays for a trip to the finals at 2:30 p.m. here at the Dee Events Center.
“We don’t want to be arrogant, but we believe we are the champs until someone takes that from us,” Jensen said.
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