The Tualatin girls basketball team found itself in unfamiliar territory Monday night: trailing.
A little more than midway through the second quarter of Monday night’s POA Holiday Classic championship game, the Timberwolves trailed Benson by 12 points.
“This team has never faced that kind of adversity,” Tualatin Head Coach Wes Pappas said. “We could have made plenty of excuses and this team just doubled down on defense. Our defense caused a couple turnovers and kept going to a couple of easy buckets because we were getting nothing offensively.”
Tualatin cut the deficit to four by halftime, and midway through the third quarter, the Timberwolves regained the lead for the first time since the game’s opening minutes.
The Timberwolves’ smothering defense continued in the second half, where they held Benson to nine points, including just two total in the fourth quarter. Tualatin made a few timely buckets and hit most of their free throws to pull ahead for the 40-32 win at Franklin High School.
“It was hard because we haven’t felt that type of pressure so early on and we haven’t been down by so much,” said junior Ries Miadich. “It was really inspiring for our team to come back from that and really come together and take over.”
Miadich said that in her freshman year, Tualatin lost in the first round of the POA tournament, and last year, they lost in the title game, so it was exciting to cap off this year’s tournament with the trophy.
The offense took a while to get going against a tough Benson defense, which held Tualatin to just four points in the first quarter. Stepping up for Tualatin after that was freshman Kendall Dawkins, who finished the game with 22 points.
“Kendall was just an absolute warrior,” Pappas said. “It wasn’t like a bunch of nifty plays. A lot of it was her just going, ‘I’m going to find a way.’ That’s what she does. She’s only a freshman, but just finds a way.”
Perhaps making the win even more impressive for Tualatin is the Timberwolves were without freshman guard Love Lei Best, the team’s leading scorer and who the offensive mainly runs through. Best was out of state with a family obligation and was averaging 25 points a game so far in the POA tournament.
“We struggled really mightily without her in the first quarter and a half,” Pappas said. “The one thing that we can always just rely on is defense and toughness and trying to win the battle in the paint.”
A big part of the toughness on defense against Benson came from a pair of juniors: Ries Miadich and Alex Padilla. Pappas said Miadich was one of the defensive catalysts that led to the turnaround but putting tons of pressure on Benson and forcing some turnovers that led to easy buckets. He also called Padilla a defensive machine.
“She is the most versatile defender I’ve ever had in 23 years (of coaching),” he said. “I’ve been know for defense for a long time, but I’ve never had anybody that could play as many different positions in our various defenses as she can. She can literally be the middle of our two-three and be a shot blocker, or she can go pick you up at three-quarters and press you and push you to a side. She can go do that against really anyone, even Division 1 players.”
Tualatin sits at 8-0 after the tournament win and is currently ranked as the top team in the state in OSAA rankings. The Timberwolves have wins against three other teams currently ranked in the top 10, with another one coming up at 6:30 p.m. Thursday night at home when Clackamas comes to town.
Clackamas is currently ranked No. 3 in the state in OSAA’s rankings, and features five-star USC commit Jazzy Davidson, who has been named as the top player in the state the last three years.
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