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East Valley Fires Away: PHOTO GALLERY
Mar 13, 2010 (Yakima Herald-Republic - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
YAKIMA, Wash. -- For its first one and a half games, the girls on East Valley's basketball team looked like what they needed more than anything else was some shooting practice -- just to sit out at the 3-point line and fire away for, say, an hour and a half or so.
On Friday morning, that's just what they did. In a game. And it was a thing of beauty.
With Clarkston camped in a zone defense, the Red Devils came out firing away from beyond the arc and couldn't seem to miss, burying a tournament-record-tying 12 3-pointers out of 20 attempts -- a sizzling 60 percent -- en route to a 66-52 triumph that clinched a berth in today's 10 a.m. fifth-place game against Archbishop Murphy.
"We were just making our shots today," said Yasamin Mohsenian, who found nothing but net on every shot she attempted on Friday -- four 3-pointers, a 10-footer off a shifty baseline move and both of her free throws. "I don't know why, we were just on a roll today. For me, it felt like it just came natural. Kaylah (Gonzales) always makes her 3-pointers, but today, everybody did."
Perhaps it's because their alarm went off.
With the players in the locker room a half-hour prior to their 9 a.m. tipoff, coach Robi Raab's cell-phone alarm went off, a ploy he had timed to take the nervous edge off his players. "OK, the lids are coming off the basket now," he announced, inducing grins from the Red Devils.
"I felt like they needed to relax and just play," Raab said after the game. "The first couple of days they came out very tight and anxious. But then today Yasi (Mohsenian) got a couple of big ones early, Kaylah played well, and it was infectious."
The Red Devils (20-5) had shot a cumulative 11-for-75 (14.7 percent) over their first six quarters at the 2A tournament, but Raab -- who can appear to be quite the firebrand at courtside -- was nothing but supportive with his team.
"He wasn't an ogre the last couple of days at all with us," Mohsenian said. "He just told us to keep our heads up and we'd be OK."
That unwavering faith in his players and his alarm strategum paid off. Gonzales and Mohsenian each hit a pair of 3-pointers in the opening quarter, but the Bantams matched them point for point. With East Valley's lead still a tenuous 52-45 entering the fourth quarter, Mary Orthmann swished back-to-back treys that triggered an 11-0 run, removing any remaining suspense.
"We just wanted to have fun today -- we were definitely going to make sure this wasn't our last game," said Orthmann, who made all three of her 3-point attempts and scored 10 points, joining Mohsenian (a career-high 16 points), Gonzales (14) and Annie Martinez (13) in double figures.
That balanced attack more than offset the 26-point performance by Clarkston's Kellie McCann-Smith, a University of Nebraska recruit, whose four 3-pointers included a couple of 25-foot bombs.
"One after another she was burying," Raab said. "She was very impressive."
But on a day when they scored more points than they had in both of their first two games -- scored, in fact, more than any girls team did over the tourney's first two days -- the Red Devils were the most impressive of all.
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to http://www.yakima-herald.com/. Copyright (c) 2010, Yakima Herald-Republic,
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