Timothy Christian 33, Westmont 29
When your team can only scrape together 8 total points across the middle quarters of a basketball game, you had better hope the defense can hold its ground.
That's exactly the scenario Timothy Christian's girls basketball team placed itself in Wednesday night when the Trojans squared off against Westmont in the semifinals of the Class AA Timothy Christian regional.
Despite the low point total, the Trojans squeaked out a 33-29 victory over Westmont, sending them into tonight's regional final against second-seeded Walther Lutheran.
"Thank goodness for defense," Timothy Christian coach Ryan DeKoekkoek said, finally able to smile. "If it wasn't for our defense, we probably would have been down by double digits and been in real trouble on our own home court. That would have been kind of a sad way to end the season."
Westmont (12-17) held the lead for most of the second half until a Meghan Leach layup with 4:02 remaining in the fourth quarter gave Timothy Christian a 28-26 lead.
After a Shannon McNeil free throw regained the lead for the Trojans, senior Lindsay VanderBrug's bank shot with 1:16 to go put Timothy Christian ahead 31-28 and gave the home team some breathing room.
"We have a tendency to get a little tight in our shooting, and I said, 'Look, you've just got to keep going,' " DeKoekkoek said. "Lindsay made a big basket for us … and I think that allowed everybody else to relax a little bit and not think about it."
The Trojans (16-11) defense allowed just a single point across the final 3:43 of the game, with the lone Westmont point coming on a Sherelle Thomas free throw with only 24 seconds remaining.
"Defense is big. We work on that all the time, (and) we want to work together in help defense," VanderBrug said. "We're ready for a big game tomorrow, and we're just excited to play our hardest and do our best."
Execution during crunch time doomed the Sentinels on Wednesday night, with a trio of freshmen logging heavy minutes down the stretch.
"We just didn't execute very well at the end. We couldn't score when we needed to, and things just didn't go our way," Westmont coach Mike McCord said. "We got some good looks though, and we just didn't make them.
"I hate to make youth as an excuse because we've played long enough that it shouldn't be, but we're still a little young, and we've never been in this situation before. We maybe could have done some things better, but overall I think we played pretty well."