Ellicottville Girls Basketball Team Advances
Ellicottville Girls Basketball Advances to Class D Semifinals
Lady Eagles Needed Overtime to Dispatch Visiting Westfield, 58-52
Photos / Rich Rumfola
At some point during pre-game activities before the Ellicottville Lady Eagles’ 58-52, home playoff win over the Westfield Lady Wolverines last Thursday, Ellicottville point guard Dalayla Alexander started to get the feeling like maybe it was going to be a good night.
“Sometimes in warmups, I’m way off, but tonight my shots were on and I hit a lot of them in warmups,” the junior sharpshooter explained of her early offensive success. “Then I came out super-hot in the game and they definitely weren’t guarding me hard enough.”
By the time the #7 seeded Lady Wolverines devised a Plan B for dealing with Alexander, the damage was done, as #2 seed Ellicottville’s leading scorer this season knocked down 6 three-point shots in the first half and helped an otherwise cold-shooting Lady Eagles team stay just ahead of their foes for a 28-24 halftime lead.
After the contest, Lady Eagles Coach Tracy Rozler had high praise for her point guard. “She was on fire tonight! She played her game and she kept her cool and they could not shut her down.”
Out of the locker room to start the second half, however, Westfield had the answer to virtually every offensive effort that the Lady Eagles mounted, as the visiting Lady Wolverines took advantage of early foul trouble on key Ellicottville players and then especially after sophomore standout, Natalee Leiper fouled out midway through the quarter.
By the start of the fourth quarter Westfield had erased Ellicottville’s razor-slim, four-point lead at halftime and surged ahead by 8 points, for a 40-32 lead of their own, as the home team went stone-cold shooting from the floor, scoring only four points in the whole quarter.
“Honestly it was very stressful that shots weren’t falling,” recalled senior forward Allison Rowland, a team captain and driving force behind the Lady Eagles this season. ”I remember in the third quarter I couldn’t believe what was happening. Then in the fourth quarter I noticed me being down was pointless because we weren’t far behind; we just lacked our third quarter and I really didn’t want that to be my last game.”
The Lady Eagles finished the contest hitting on a modest 21% of their shots from the floor, but Rowland and the Lady Eagles found just enough points, scored at precisely the right time, and earned a comeback for the ages - partially behind two answered three-point prayers, shot by freshman guard Ande Northrup, as time ticked down in the fourth quarter.
“When Ande gets put into any game, she may not score the most points on our team,” Rozler said. “But she scores at the exact, right moment every single time - whenever she scores, it’s when we need something to boost us up.”
Though the Lady Eagles stiffened their defense and outscored the visitors in the final frame, the home team still found itself down six points with a minute to go in their season.
“Being down with a minute to go was so hard to believe,” Rowland said. “But I kept looking at Dalayla saying, ‘We got this,’ because I needed that encouragement to keep up the fight.”
And fight Rowland and her teammates did.
The senior forward was an absolute force at both ends of the floor, contesting every shot, battling for every loose ball and hauling in every rebound she could get her hands on. Rowland nabbed a jaw-dropping, game-high 17 rebounds, including 8 all-important offensive boards, thereby giving Lady Eagles shooters extra scoring chances on the same trip up the floor. Rowland completed her impressive double-double performance with 15 points, second only to Alexander’s 26 points.
Senior Ryah Quinn came up with a nice night in the paint versus Westfield; the center pulled down 11 rebounds and was fouled nearly every time she touched the ball in the second half. She scored four points in the game - all on foul shots.
Into the overtime stanza, the Lady Eagles got ahead on a Rowland jump shot, then capitalized on the apparent frustration of Westfield players, whose steady stream of fouls kept the Lady Eagles on the charity stripe the entire extra period.
Though Ellicottville’s shooting woes on the night carried over to the foul line (the Lady Eagles made only 17 of 37 free throw attempts) they were awarded 14 free throws in the overtime period alone, and capitalized on six of them. In this way, Rozler’s squad managed to pull ahead and then put the game out of reach - one point at a time.
“We played together (as a team),” Rozler reflected after the game. “We fought hard and we wanted it more than Westfield. Our girls played with their hearts and they just wanted it more.”
The Lady Eagles are headed to a semifinal round matchup against the #3 seed Sherman Lady Wildcats on Wednesday, March 1 at Jamestown Community College.