EVERETT
Perfection isn’t easy, and Friday night proved that for the Archbishop Murphy Wildcats girls basketball team.
Entering the contest with an outstanding 29.2 points per game victory margin, the Wildcats needed all 32 minutes of its 2A District 1 first-round contest versus the Burlington-Edison Tigers to remain perfect.
Thanks to a shot clock, buzzer-beating bucket by Shelby Lyman the Wildcats defeated the Tigers 41-38 at Archbishop Murphy.
“Shelby made a big shot. That’s an individual play to get you a lead in a tight game. That’s a great play,” Archbishop Murphy head coach John Barhanovich said.
Lyman’s basket with 11.9 seconds remaining gave the Wildcats (21-0 overall) a 40-38 lead and kept Archbishop Murphy’s perfect season alive.
The basket also allowed the Wildcats to avenge back-to-back 2A District 1 playoff losses to the Tigers.
For the past two seasons the Burlington-Edison Tigers have been the achilles heel for the Wildcats, defeating Archbishop Murphy in both 2007 and 2008 in winner-to-state games. In both seasons the Wildcats weren’t able to bounce back from the losses.
“It was in the back of all our heads. They beat us last year and my freshman year,” Lyman, a junior guard said.
After drilling the jumper Lyman’s night wasn’t finished.
On the ensuing inbounds pass, teammate Sam Pettinger, who led the Wildcats with 10 points, deflected a Burlington-Edison pass which Lyman corraled and then was quickly fouled.
Lyman would sink one of two free-throw attempts and Burlington-Edison’s Kristine Thoe’s 3-point attempt as time expired bounced off the backboard and then the front of the rim giving the Wildcats the narrow victory.
“In the back of our minds we knew we’d pull it out,” Lyman said.
The Tigers (14-7) held Archbishop Murphy to its lowest point total of the season. The Wildcats had scored a season-low 44 in a 44-41 win over Lynden Christian on Dec. 13, one of just two games where the Wildcats have won by fewer than 15 points.
The Wildcats, meanwhile, did what they do best – play defense – holding their opponent to fewer than 40 points. The Wildcats have allowed just four teams to post 40-plus points in a game.
“That’s our game. Our goal in each game is to hold our opponent to under 40, to rely on our defense because that’s what wins games,” Barhonovich said.
Though the Wildcats struggled from the floor, shooting just 33-percent from the field, it was down the stretch when they made the key buckets.
Claire Anderson, Alyssa Smith and Nickole Bartholomew all hit go-ahead 3-pointers in the fourth quarter. Bartholomew finished with nine points on three 3-pointers.
“You’re not going to get a lot of easy shots in the district games. You’ve got to cash in on the ones you get. You have to rely on your defense to win basketball games and we definitely had to rely on that,” Barhanovich said.
Kevin Johnson writes for The Herald in Everett.
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