Crashing through the end of the Seaside’s bench and taking out the water station while chasing down a ball that was going out of bounds, Philomath senior Zoee Howard somehow managed to keep her balance on the wet, slippery surface.
At the time, more than 5 minutes remained in the game and Philomath had not quite put the visiting Seagulls away with a single-digit lead of 47-38. After a slight delay to deal with the water-on-the-floor situation, Howard ended up with the ball on the other end as the Warriors set up their offense.
And then boom — Howard buried a 3-pointer.
Whether it’s water stations, opposing bigs or broken glasses — although she was back to contacts in this one — Howard seems to be able work through many of the challenges that come up during a basketball game. The 3-pointer with 5:03 remaining put Philomath up 50-38 to all but secure the victory.
The Warriors ended up with a 60-44 win in a girls basketball game that had been arranged as a tuneup for the two playoff-bound programs.
“They gave us really good looks and they came after it defensively and they fly around and shoot the ball,” PHS coach Ben Silva said about the Seagulls. “No. 12 (junior Carly Corder) couldn’t miss it felt like for a while there in the second half. But we weathered that by being able to score, which sometimes has been a little bit of a struggle this year.”
Ah yes, the offensive struggles. The Warriors have been awfully tough on opponents with an unyielding defense that allows an average of just 30.6 points per game. But Philomath has been through some rough stretches on the other end.
“We actually executed a lot of the things that we were working on this week in practice so that was good to see,” Silva said. “We feel like we haven’t been getting as much offensively as we could and we identified some things we could improve.”
Working inside to the post players was a noticeable focus in the 13-point win. Sophomore Reagan Heiken could not be stopped in a 30-point afternoon on 11 field goals and 8 of 13 on free throws. She was set up for success with several pinpoint passes from teammates.
Twice in the victory, Heiken came up with midcourt steals and finished on the other end with easy layups. It’s been an oft-occurring part of No. 34’s game in recent weeks.
Said Silva, “Her burst speed is pretty fast.”
Philomath’s 60 points were the second-most in any contest over the 25-game schedule this season. The Warriors scored 63 in a Dec. 10 win over Marist Catholic. The team averages around 45 points per game.
The two teams played back-and-forth basketball over the game’s first three minutes. Philomath took a 7-6 lead with 4:55 left in the first on Heiken’s first hoop of the afternoon and never trailed again. By the end of the quarter, the Warriors were up by a 13-6 margin.
In fact, Philomath went on a 14-0 run that took more than 10 minutes off the game clock. Heiken had her fair share of points, including free throws, and freshman Reagan Nuño, sophomore Annaleise Brown and Howard also put up points during that early run.
In the second half, the Warriors went up by as many as 16 points but the Seagulls kept hanging around. Seaside scored 22 in the third quarter, a pretty much unheard of level of production that teams can rarely pull off against Philomath’s defense.
Early in the fourth quarter, Philomath’s lead was down to seven at 45-38. Heiken then came up with one of her steal-and-score moments and Howard drilled the 3 after the water station incident.
Seaside never got the deficit to less than 10 points the rest of the way.
Heiken shot 52.4% from the field on 11-of-21 shooting and was fairly consistent throughout the entire four quarters.
For the Seagulls (13-9), a team that won the Cowapa League title, Corder finished with 16 points on five field goals, including a 3-pointer, and 5 of 6 from the foul line.
Philomath (20-5) will focus on practice in the coming week with the expectation that the team’s first-round playoff game will be Friday evening. The Warriors will host the matchup — the opponent is to be determined based on how Saturday night’s play-in games come out.
