There’s a Las Vegas tradition at the roulette tables. When a wheel strings together a bunch of black numbers, everyone will crowd around and bet on red, knowing the eventually red will hit.
That’s exactly what it felt like last night at Millikan as the Rams took on Cajon in the second round of the CIF playoffs. Everyone was just waiting for someone to hit, and it ended up being Millikan guard Armelia Patterson with two three pointers (her only points of the game) in overtime to lift the Rams to a 40-31 victory.
The two teams were ice cold from the field and went a combined 25-for-101 in regulation, but the scrappy Millikan Rams took to the contest and answered with a high pressure man-on-man defense. Cajon responded with a variety of zones, so the game turned into a survival act.
“After the first quarter I told them that it was okay, the shots would fall,” said Millikan head coach Lorene Morgan. “At the half, I was like, okay, we need to get something going… then in the fourth quarter I said let’s just stop shooting. It wasn’t like we they weren’t good looks, but we were shooting ourselves out of the game.”
The shooting woes started at the tipoff as the teams went 4-for-24 from the field in the first quarter and went t0 the second with Cajon leading, 5-4. Back-to-back outlet passes from Destiny Watson and Rachel Flores to Sequoia Hernandez sparked an 8-2 Millikan run and a 17-12 halftime lead. Hernandez, Watson and Hilary Drinovsky all finished with eight points.
The sluggish offense picked up where it left off in the second half and the Rams earned six for their eight points in the third quarter from the free throw line. Millikan maintained a seven point lead until midway through the fourth quarter when turnovers almost lost the game. Five turnovers turned into a 6-0 Cajon run that tied the game at 29-29 with two minutes remaining.
After trading missed lay ups with less than a minute remaining, Shannon Moore had a leaner in the lane with a second remaining to win the game, but it was just short.
Millikan opened the overtime period with another turnover, but the stifling defense and Cajon’s inability to put the biscuit in the basket gave Patterson the opportunity to score her only points of the night after pulling down a game high 15 rebounds.
“There were some rebounds there… wow,” said Morgan of Patterson’s activity in the second half. “The thing is, when she missed the first shots, and when she made the last two, she had the same face. She never got flustered.”
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With the victory, Millikan moves on to another long roadie. The Rams will travel to Etiwanda on Wednesday.
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