AUGUSTA — It was a perfect ending Saturday for the Hall-Dale girls basketball team.
The Bulldogs beat Stearns, 57-42, for the Class C state championship Saturday night at the Augusta Civic Center. Hall-Dale finished its season with a 22-0 record, while the Minutemen finished 16-4.
It’s the fourth Gold Ball for Hall-Dale, but its first since 2011.
“It’s really surreal, it hasn’t sunk in yet,” Hall-Dale coach O.J. Jaramillo said. “I’m just thrilled, I don’t know what else to say. I’m just thrilled.”
“It just shows all the work we put in,” said senior guard KK Wills. “We worked really hard. We’ve paid our dues since middle school and I think it shows. We worked hard.”
Hayden Madore led the Bulldogs with 16 points, while Wills added 12. Amanda Trepanier chipped in with 10.
Kelly Farber and Makayla Anderson led Stearns with 13 points apiece.
Up 23-17 at halftime, Hall-Dale pulled further ahead with a big third quarter, outscoring Stearns 22-6.
Defense played a huge role for Hall-Dale, which forced more than 20 turnovers.
“Transition (was key),” said Madore, a sophomore guard. “Slowing it down (offensively), we just had to push our tempo and play help defense and just play as a team.”
Neither team gained much ground in the first quarter, as both teams traded 7-0 runs on the way to an 8-8 tie. The Bulldogs tacked another 7-0 run early in the second quarter. Madore got 10 of her 16 points in the first half.
“I like to watch the body language of the team we’re playing, and it was pretty obvious in the last two minutes (of the half) that (Stearns) was really starting to gas,” Jaramillo said. “The message (at halftime) was ‘We have them where we want them. The first two to three minutes of the third quarter, we need to run, run, run, run. Throughout the season, that’s kind of been our game, but probably by the four-minute mark in the third quarter, we were starting to pull away.”
Hall-Dale’s third-quarter surge started with a 3-pointer from Wills. Three minutes later, Wills drained another 3-pointer that kicked off a 9-0 run.
“Sometimes we’re a team that kind of lets up,” Wills said. “We think we have it, but (we have to) nail them to the ground, keep them down while their down.”
Stearns’ top scoring threat, Alisyn Alley, suffered a knee injury early in the second quarter. After a few moments on the bench, Alley returned to the game, but the Bulldogs held her to four points.
“Our biggest (goal) was stopping Alley,” Wills said. “Once we slowed her down, the rest of the team just kind of shut down with it. I think that was our biggest thing.”
“It really sucks that (Alley) got hurt,” Jaramillo said. “She obviously had a bad wheel in the second quarter. She came in, kudos to her, she tried to make it work, but it just didn’t work for her. Everything goes through her. As soon as she came out, our press (defense) was already doing pretty well. But without their primary ball handler, that’s kind of like blood in the water.”
Anderson scored 11 of her 13 points in the final quarter for Stearns.
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