Suffering a tough setback

Joe Williamson made the long walk across the court and into the locker room at West Albany High School on Friday night.

Williamson walked to the front of the room as his Corvallis High girls basketball players sat in desks.

He grabbed a chair, pulled it in front of his players and looked for the words to say to them.

Not many came to mind.

Williamson knew his players had just wasted a golden opportunity to all but seal up the Mid-Willamette Conference title.

All they had needed to do was get past West Albany.

“It would have been a shame for West if they didn’t win the game tonight because they played much better basketball,” he told the players.

“The scoreboard is what it should be.”

The scoreboard read 58-54 for the Bulldogs, sending the rowdy crowd into a bit of a frenzy.

A win and the Spartans would have held a two-game lead over the Bulldogs and a couple other teams in the conference with four games to play.

Instead, the Spartans are in for a battle over the final four games.

Williamson knows one loss isn’t the end of the world, but it sure does make life tougher now.

“We put ourselves in a spot where we have to respond now and I think we will,” he said. “We have no choice now. The choice is we need to win out.”

And there’s no reason to believe the Spartans can’t. They played poorly during large chunks of the game, yet still had a chance to win late.

West Albany used a 10-2 run at the start of the second quarter to take a 23-14 lead.

After a time out, the Spartans responded with a 9-0 run of their own, capped by McKenzie Redberg’s 3-pointer.

A basket inside gave the Bulldogs the lead back but Alaina Adams drained a 3-pointer at the buzzer to put CHS up 26-25 at the half.

The momentum from that shot was short lived.

West Albany scored the first 16 points of the third quarter to take a 41-26 lead.

The Spartans responded with a 12-6 run to close the quarter. Katie Schrock hit two 3-pointers and Karly Laney scored three buckets in the run.

Laney’s fourth bucket, a three by Adams and a layup by Redberg made it 47-45 and just like that the Spartans were back in it.

Gabe Johnson’s three-point play got the Spartans even, but they failed to execute over the last 2:34 and only got a banked three by Adams with 36 seconds left as the Bulldogs did just enough to win.

Turnovers and poor offensive sets doomed the Spartans late.

“For some reason we just didn’t execute what I said in time outs,” Williamson said. “It didn’t happen. That’s frustrating because we did work pretty hard to get back to the point where we were in the game and then they didn’t do what I asked them to.”

Adams finished with a game-high 20, including four threes. She also took another charge in the first half.

Laney had a solid game off the bench with eight, as did Schrock with nine, all on threes.

But in the end it wasn’t enough, and was frustrating for everyone involved.

“West Albany came to play,” Williamson said. “We came thinking it was going to be easy. They brought the fight to us and I thought we did a good job of bringing the fight back a couple of times, but if you want to win these big games you can’t let teams have those kinds of runs on you.

“We let them happen and we did our best to come back but you can’t let teams have big runs on you.”

The Spartans are off for two days and don’t return to the court for a game until they host South Albany on Wednesday. They then hit the road for a crucial game at Silverton next Friday.

West Albany is at Lebanon on Wednesday.

West Albany 58, Corvallis 54
CORVALLIS 12 14 12 16 — 54
WEST ALBANY 13 12 22 11 — 58
Corvallis: Alaina Adams 20, Schrock 9, Kar. Laney 8, Johnson 5, M. Redberg 5, Kay. Laney 5, Westly 2, Seitz, Gerner
West Albany: Deijonae Slade 19, Grady 12, Hortsch 10, Kastrava 6, Lepman 6, Jamison 3, Johnston 2, Hartman 2, Silsby
JV: West Albany 57, Corvallis 48