money Xavier Prep grinds out tense, tight tilt with Shadow Hills to share DEL girls' hoops title
The intensity at the Xavier Prep gym was cranked up to 1,000 on Tuesday night as Shadow Hills visited for what was, in essence, a Desert Empire League championship game.
The combination of stifling defense by both teams, big-game jitters and the on-edge electricity of the atmosphere made baskets hard to come by. There were so few open shots that when they came around even the most talented players couldn't turn them into points.
Finally, Xavier Prep's Genna Wienecke broke through. Her 3-point swish from the right corner with 28.6 seconds gave the Saints a 36-35 lead, their first advantage of the game since the score was 5-4.
And what followed was the wildest closing 28.6 seconds you could imagine, but remarkably, none of it resulted in points.
The score stayed at 36-35, and when the final buzzer sounded, Xavier Prep went into a frenzied celebration as they handed the Knights their first loss of the league season. The Saints will join them as co-champions of the DEL with identical 9-1 records, having split their two games.
"That was a very intense game. Every moment the whole night felt like every play was going to be win or lose," Wienecke said. "When (her late 3-pointer) went through, I thought it was game over. I knew we were going to take it from there. It really lifted up our momentum and got us going."
In the final 28.6 seconds from the moment Wienecke's 3-pointer swished through, all of the following things happened:
Shadow Hills was fouled and missed the front end of a 1-and-1.
Still with one foul to give, the Knights quickly fouled after the Saints got the rebound.
On the ensuing in-bounds, Shadow Hills forced a jump ball, which gave them another possession.
Another missed shot led to an epic battle for the rebound with 8.3 seconds left, which ended with a tussle and a double technical foul, one on each team.
The adults in the crowd were getting into it with each other verbally and had to be separated. Xavier Prep administrators separated the two fan bases, having the Saints fans go to one side of the bleachers and the Knights to the other.
The Knights fouled quickly on the Saints' ensuing in-bounds. The Saints missed the front end of a 1-and-1, which Shadow Hills rebounded and called timeout with 6.2 seconds left.
Shadow Hills' Victoria Hyatt, the hot hand all night, took it the length of the floor, but the ball was knocked away near the 3-point line before she could get a shot off. Whew!
The final buzzer sounded, the Saints celebrated and the Knights had to settle for a share of the league crown.
"Those type of rivalry, everything-on-the-line games have such heightened tension and lot of nerves," Xavier Prep coach Thadd Bosley said. "Both teams had a lot of unforced turnovers and uncharacteristic misses.
"I knew after the first couple minutes it was going to be one of those mucky, ugly games," he said. "But this was the best defense we played all year. As long as they committed to staying in the game on defense, I kind of had a feeling we could be in position to make something happen at the end and we did."
The largest lead either team had all night was six points. The Knights led 18-14 at the half and 24-20 heading into the final quarter.
The game featured some fantastic individual battles as the league's best players were guarding each other. Sonia Urbina was in Wienecke's hip pocket all night. Carla Hyatt and Victoria Hyatt were taking turns trying to slow down Xavier Prep's Amoree Ferrel. It was fun to watch.
The Saints defense was equally stout. Remarkably, Carla Hyatt and Urbina, the two leading scorers for the Knights only combined for eight points and one field goal on the night, and they still were in control of the game. That's because the Knights got great efforts out of Victoria Hyatt and Julisa Lang, who was dominating in the paint. Victoria finished with 11 points and Lang had 14 points.
Meanwhile, the two Xavier Prep stars scored 34 of the team's 36 points. Weinecke finished with 19 points, including 10 in the fourth quarter. Ferrel had 15. Ashleigh Schein and Ashley Wilkins battled all night in the paint, scratching out rebounds and making life tough on the Saints. Logan Harris, the only other senior on the team along with Wilkins, played harassing defense as well. The only other basket was a key second-half score by Elizabeth Archuleta.
"Make no mistake, that's a good team over there. They get up for us, we get up for them and hats off to them," said first-year Shadow Hills coach Tim Britton, whose team won the first meeting 50-42. "We missed some open shots that we usually make and sometimes that happens. But we're happy about grabbing still a share of the title, but we have bigger plans, and we're excited about what's coming up."
The Knights players had some sad, exhausted faces immediately after the game, but after gathering as a group and talking about what they accomplished, they were greeted with a celebratory roar from their fans when they emerged from the locker room. That turned some of the frowns upside down.
Ironically, the last time the Shadow Hills' girls team shared a league title was in 2017 when they were coached by Bosley, the Saints' coach.
Both teams will now await the girls' basketball pairings, which will be announced Tuesday. Thanks to the co-championship, both can expect a first-round home game.
Shad Powers is a sports columnist for The Desert Sun. He can be reached at shad.powers@desertsun.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Xavier Prep wins tense tilt with Shadow Hills to share DEL girls' hoops title
