Down the line: Mullen girls basketball surges past Mead in final four
A drop down from Class 6A has Mullen girls basketball back to its championship-worthy ways.
admin
DENVER — A drop down from Class 6A has Mullen girls basketball back to its championship-worthy ways.
During the Class 5A state semifinals at the Denver Coliseum on Thursday night, the sixth-seeded Mustangs put it all on the line — literally — to carry them to a 44-30 victory over No. 2 Mead, who’s been stymied in the final four three out of the past four seasons.
The Mustangs made a cool 18 of 24 free throws, good for 75%, throughout the night to lift their offense when the well dried up from the floor. No player embodied that efficiency more than senior Tatum Jones, who netted 10 of her 12 points from the foul line, missing just two.
Junior point guard Chloe Pelster came alive in the fourth quarter to push the Mustangs over the finish line, eventually ending her night with 14 points. By game’s end, Mullen shot just 30% from the floor (12 for 40), but Mead fared worse at 11 for 47 (23.4%).
“The fact that we get to play 6A teams all year — and we have a pretty strong schedule — really benefits us when we’re going into 5A playoffs, because they have a different confidence to them,” Mullen head coach Tonia Jones said. “This is a tough year for 5A, just like it is for 6A, and the benefit is we get to play (6A’s top-seeded Grandview’s) 6-(foot)-5 Sienna Betts, who’s going to get us ready for games like this.”
Jones said that the Mustangs emphasize free throws in their practices and fell just short of their 80% goal. She added, “We don’t often get a lot of calls just because we have the height advantage, so it was really great today that they got to attack and go to the line.”
Prior to their two-season stint in 6A, the Mustangs won three straight 4A crowns. They carried the intensity wrought by the tenacious Centennial League into the final four and relied on their staunch defense inside the arc and their length near the post. Undersized Mead could only pray for clean, easy layups, but the basketball gods weren’t kind to them even from close range.
There’s just something about the later stages of the state tournament that gives the Mavericks fits. Mead head coach Mike Ward said that’s just a side effect of the larger renaissance of women’s basketball around the country, and among a smaller yet thriving Colorado high school scene.
“You get this far, it’s going to be a dogfight. You got to beat good teams if you want to win this whole thing,” he said, adding that teams like Mead, Mullen, Air Academy and Grandview are “showcasing what women’s basketball is in this state. I hope that as we continue to go down this road, the girls that are in third, fourth, fifth grade in every community, they look up to the girls that are playing right now. ‘That’s where I want to be. That’s who I want to be.’ That’s the cool part.”
The Mavericks leaned on their senior leader, point guard Darby Haley, to breathe some life into their offense in the second half, but a second-quarter hole proved too deep to dig out of. She finished her night with 14 points, while no other Mavericks came close to matching that mark. It didn’t help that they couldn’t stop Mullen on the other end of the floor, or weave their way around its bigs in the paint.
The Mavericks and Mustangs met each other’s mettle throughout a sluggish first quarter, leading to an 8-8 tie by the time the buzzer sounded. The defensive dogfight that ensued had both teams throwing up brick after brick, but Mullen was able to differentiate itself at the line in the second frame.
The Mustangs drew most of Mead’s first-half fouls through their shooting motions, and cashed in repeatedly. They sank 11 of 14 free throws in the first half alone, good for a 78.6% success rate, while the Mavericks struggled in the few instances they were allowed a free shot.
The Mavericks shot just 17.4% from the field in the opening two quarters, but Mullen wasn’t much better at 22.7%. The Mustangs abused every miscue that Mead made and forced 11 turnovers before the break rolled around. Mullen led 21-10 at the half, never letting the Mavericks make a field goal in the second quarter.
“Their shooting didn’t really affect us once we started switching on screens, and it was really easy to adjust,” Pelster said. “We just took advantage of them when we were driving and just switching on the screens, and their back-doors didn’t affect us anymore. We just kind of took it to them with our driving and our shooting, and our defense really brought us together and won the game for us.”
Mead couldn’t move the needle much after that, despite putting together a much cleaner game through the final 16 minutes. It ended its season with a 23-4 record, again just falling short of a title game appearance.
Mullen, meanwhile, has a date with No. 1 Air Academy for Saturday’s championship game set for 5:45 p.m.
“It’s tough the whole playoffs. I mean, those are good teams. It’s never going to be easy. It’s never going to be a ‘gimme’ game,” Haley said. “(Colorado girls basketball) has definitely been on the rise, so it’s really good to see, and we talked about it in the locker room. We’re inspiring the next generation. So many little kids want to play at the level we are, so I hope it just grows more.”
