John Bohnenkamp for Pen City Current Sports
MONTEZUMA — They had spent the first half seeing their opponent’s 3-pointers fall from all sides of the arc, and tried but couldn’t contain the post player getting free inside.
There wasn’t much time left in their season, and so the players on Holy Trinity’s girls basketball team took their coach’s advice in Friday’s Class 1A regional semifinal against ninth-ranked Montezuma.
“I told them at halftime, ‘That wasn’t us. Let’s go be us,’” Tony Johnson said.
“Tony said, ‘We have nothing to lose. Put it all out there, because this could be the last 16 minutes. If it is, let’s go out with a bang,’” senior Mary Kate Bendlage said.
“We came out with nothing to lose,” senior Natalie Randolph said. “It was just, ‘Let’s go play, have fun, play our game.”
And so the Crusaders did, clawing in an attempt to get out of a deficit that proved to be just too large to overcome.
Holy Trinity’s season ended with a 60-44 loss to the Bravettes, who play No. 8 CAM on Wednesday night in the regional final for a trip to the state tournament.
The Crusaders (20-3), who trailed 43-16 with seven minutes left in the third quarter, got to within 47-36 with 5:43 left. But Montezuma hit 11-of-14 free throws in the final 5:10 to extinguish the rally.
“The second half, I felt, we won,” Johnson said. “We just dug too big of a hole. We tried to get it down to single digits there, and I thought if we could do that we had a really good chance.”
“Throughout the whole season, we’ve come out against teams in the second half and really put it on them,” said Bendlage, who led Holy Trinity with 16 points. “We did that tonight, we just had given up too many points in the first half.”
“The second half, we had a lot more drive,” said Randolph, who finished with 15 points. “It was an insane first half. We fought back, that’s all we could have done.”
Holy Trinity led late in the first quarter and only trailed 13-11 at the end of the quarter. But Montezuma (19-4) outscored the Crusaders 27-5 in the second quarter. The Bravettes hit six of their eight first-half 3-pointers in the quarter, and when Holy Trinity went five minutes without a point, the deficit just kept growing.
And when the Crusaders had the arc guarded, Montezuma center Shiressa Wetering, who had 18 points on 7-of-7 shooting, closed the half with two layups within 37 seconds.
“I just wish we could go back and redo the first half,” Bendlage said. “I think the first half, they came out hot and couldn’t miss. We struggled to get a hand in their face — we’ve never played anyone who has four shooters on the outside and then a big who’s also contributing.
“It definitely got a little frustrating, especially when we had played great defense.”
“We didn’t come out how we wanted, at all,” Randolph said. “They were making absolutely everything. They’re a good team, but if we would have had a better first half, we could have hung in there better, and there could have been a different outcome.”
“We had a bad quarter,” Johnson said. “They had five or six threes in the corner that just killed us. Some of them were long, they banked one in, and we struggled getting our rotations on defense.”
Johnson made sure after the game to point out the accomplishments of the season to his team — a share of the Superconference South Division title, the Superconference Shootout championship, and a 20-win season.
“I told them we accomplished so much,” he said. “We won the conference, we won 20 games, so don’t hang your heads.
“It was a bad night in the wrong place.”
“I’m really proud of this team,” said Bendlage, who ends her career as the program’s all-time leading scorer. “We accomplished almost everything we wanted, we just came up a little short.”
“We accomplished so much with this team,” said Randolph, who missed last season with a knee injury but came back to be the team’s second leading scorer. “I’m so proud of everyone. We’ve done great things. I love everyone on this team.”
Johnson had one final message to his three seniors — Bendlage, Randolph and Raegan Holvoet.
“I told them, ‘Thank you,’” he said. “Those girls have been with me for four years, played a lot of basketball for me, worked their tails off. I’m so proud of them.
“I can’t ever express in words what those senior girls meant to me.”
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