Down by one point in the final 27 seconds of Wednesday’s quarterfinal game of the Class 4A girls basketball state tournament, Maple Grove needed a bucket. In order to get a bucket, it first needed a decent look at the hoop.
For 25 seconds, it had a hard time generating the latter. Everything the Crimson attempted seemed to get stuck. So, with 1.9 seconds remaining, Crimson coach Mark Cook called his second timeout of the possession.
Risky move. Inbounding the ball with so little time to play can be a challenge in itself.
The gamble paid off.
Maple Grove ran its sidelines out-of-bounds play to perfection, with inbounder Ava Cossette hitting Claire Stern in stride at the rim for the game-winning layup as time expired as the fourth-seeded Crimson topped fifth-seeded Lakeville North 56-55 at Williams Arena.
Maple Grove will meet top-seeded Hopkins at 6 p.m. Thursday at Williams Arena in the Class 4A semifinals.
Stern was freed up by a screen at the free throw line that got her loose heading toward the rim.
“Ava made a beautiful pass to me over the top,” Stern said. “It’s just my teammates that helped me get that shot. It was a really fun celebration.”
The play that created the magic was one Maple Grove (25-4) stows in its late-game bag of tricks. The Crimson included it in their morning walkthrough on Wednesday, hours ahead of the game. But, in the huddle with just two seconds to play, Stern and Bella Hanna suggested a slight change in formation to drag Lakeville North dominant forward Trinity Wilson, a Vanderbilt commit who had 17 points and 15 rebounds in the game, away from the play.
That helped free up the paint.
“That’s what I love about these kids is that their basketball IQ is so high that they see the bigger picture in ways that no team I’ve ever had does,” Cook said. “The reason why I called (the timeout) is because I felt so confident in that play that we worked on. It was like, ‘I knew we had this, I knew we had that in our wheelhouse, and I just thought, ‘You know what? Let’s live and die by this.’ ”
They survived by it. And, on the flip side, the play did the Panthers (24-6) in. Maple Grove’s heroics spoiled an impressive rally by the Panthers, who trailed by nine points at the half.
Lakeville North turned up its defense and execution in the second half, slowly chipping away at the Crimson advantage. Finally, with 27 seconds to play, the Panthers took their first lead since early in the first half on a putback from Elayna Boe, who scored 13 points.
“I think we just came together as a team and decided that we didn’t want to lose this game,” Wilson said. “And we knew that in the past we’ve come back from even bigger deficits in the past.”
That experience led to a poised performance from the Panthers, who were making their third-straight state tournament appearance. Lakeville North often appeared to be in control of the game down the stretch, right up until the very final ticks.
“We know how to play in tight games, and we just try to stay poised as much as possible,” Wilson said. “And I think we did a decent job of that. It just didn’t work out.”
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