A chance to show they are a different basketball team than last year.
A chance to show each opponent how hard they work.
A chance to play for a Mid-Willamette Conference championship.
And a chance to show that Crescent Valley isn’t the only strong girls basketball team in the city.
On Tuesday night, in front of a raucous crowd at Raider Gym, the Spartans got one of the chances they had been looking for.
And they made sure they took care of business.
Behind 20 points and 13 rebounds from point guard from Gabe Johnson, and 10 points and four charges taken by Alaina Adams, the Spartans avenged an early loss to the crosstown Raiders with a 55-39 win that ended an 11-game losing streak against the Raiders.
“It is amazing,” Johnson said in a downstairs hallway of the gym minutes after the final buzzer sounded.
“We have been wanting this for I don’t even know how long, probably Future Spartans, so this is whoo, awesome.”
While the victory was sweet for each member of the Spartans, it may have been sweetest for Johnson, who scored 13 of her points in the final quarter to help the Spartans pull away.
Five of those points game from the free-throw line, where Johnson missed a chance to close out the earlier meeting, but missed.
“After the last CV game where I had those, I was like, you know what I’m making these,” Johnson said.
While Johnson was key down the stretch, Adams came up big throughout, hitting several key shots and taking four charges.
It was a feat that gets the entire team lunch on the coaches.
“Oh my gosh, it amazes me,” senior Taylor Westly said of Adams, who also had two charges taken against Dallas on Saturday night.
“Here’s this big girl standing in the key and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll just run you over.’ What are you doing?”
Westly had a big 3-pointer in her final meeting against the Raiders. That shot put the Spartans (15-4, 8-1) up 34-27 midway through the third quarter and CV (10-8, 5-3) was never closer than eight the rest of the way.
Johnson took over and played like a possible conference MVP in the fourth quarter.
After CV cut the CHS lead to 39-31 early in the quarter, Johnson drove to the basket and hit a turnaround shot.
She then followed with a reverse layup that pushed the lead back to 12. Karly Laney added two free throws for a 45-31 lead and after CV’s Janelle Batista scored, Johnson hit two free throws and drove to the hoop for a 49-33 lead with 2:14 left.
With 1:20 left, Johnson scored her final point on a free throw.
Just before she stepped to the line, the CHS crowd began chanting “It’s all over.”
“When they started chanting ‘Its all over’ I kind of looked up and I was like, this is all over. We have it in the bag,” Laney said. “But then I had to keep my cool because last time I thought six points up and a couple seconds to go, I thought we had it in the bag but we didn’t.”
But there would be no miraculous comeback on this night. And when the buzzer sounded and the Spartans had held CV to under 40 points, a team goal, Laney was able to celebrate with her twin sister.
“When I saw that we kept them under 40 points, I gave Kayla a big hug,” Karly said. “It was such a good feeling.”
Kayla Laney stepped up big on the defensive end, as she and Adams limited Batista to just 12 points.
The Spartans had another tough shooting night in the first half, but managed to take a 24-20 lead into the intermission.
That’s where first-year coach Joe Williamson earned his paycheck.
“Basically what I think Joe said, and it struck home with us, is he said we need to act like this is our game and we need to win this game,” Westly said. “We need to forget this is CV and play like this is business. This is our job to take care of it. We know our roles and we need to do it.
“I think that really hit home with us in the second half. We came out with confidence.”
Williamson said he thought the Spartans needed to get over the hump of winning at CV.
While most teams have struggled at Raider Gym, the Spartans have really struggled there the last few years. Many games have been close at CHS, but the games at CV have been blowouts.
And while it wasn’t exactly a blowout on Tuesday, this time it was the Spartans on the positive end.
“That was the other monkey off our back,” Williamson said.
Corvallis 55, Crescent Valley 39
CORVALLIS 12 12 13 18 — 55
CRESCENT VALLEY 13 7 7 12 — 39
Corvallis: Gabe Johnson 20, Adams 10, M. Redberg 8, Westly 5, Seitz 2, Schrock 4, Kar. Laney 3, Gerner 2, Kay. Laney 1
Crescent Valley: Janelle Batista 12, Kaufman 11, M. Doran 8, Dong 6, H. Doran 2, Coyier, Waite, Walsh, Barnes, Rausch
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