Chautauqua Lake tops Silver Creek in playoffs with 47-36 win at JCC
Lady T’birds soar to title game
JAMESTOWN — When a team finds themselves in big game situations, they can go two ways — either they rise to the occasion or buckle under the pressure. The Chautauqua Lake Lady Thunderbirds have established themselves as the kind of team who rises to the occasion in those big games.
The Chautauqua Lake Lady Thunderbirds will play for the Section VI Class C1 girls basketball championship in back-to-back years after the Lady T’Birds defeated the Silver Creek Black Knights in the Class C1 semifinals at Jamestown Community College, thanks to a huge second half, 47-36.
The Black Knights, usually a second half squad, came ready to play against the defending champions.
“A year ago we lost to Chautauqua Lake by 31 points in the final,” stated Silver Creek head coach Tammy Rice. “So we really fought a lot this week to develop a positive mindset, that we’re not the same team we were a year ago. That they had the opportunity, just as much as Chautauqua Lake did to come out and win a basketball game.”
In the first quarter the score was neck and neck, drastically different from last year when the Lady Thunderbirds throttled the Black Knights in the championship game. At times in the quarter, Silver Creek looked like they were the better team, but even with Chautauqua Lake not playing at its best they had a 11-10 lead after one.
Silver Creek had its best quarter in the second quarter, as they gave Chautauqua Lake fits on defense. Very early into the game Abby Rice was being covered by Alexis Jacobson, but once Jacobson got into foul trouble, forcing a substitution, they had to find a way to cover Rice and in the mean time the Black Knights were clicking.
“I was more upset with myself,” Chautauqua Lake point guard Alexis Jacobson said about getting into early foul trouble. “But, then after I heard a lot of encouraging things from my teammates, which got me up and got me to encourage my teammates actually playing. So that helped.”
After giving up the first bucket to the Lady T’birds, Silver Creek responded with a 14 point run in the second quarter. The offense was flowing through Rice, she hit Jaylah Cossin down low, then scored from the free throw line, then drilled a shot from downtown and before you knew it Silver Creek led, 22-13. Chautauqua Lake saw the deficit building and called a timeout.
“In terms of adversity, I told the kids we’re going to face something in the playoffs,” stated Chautauqua Lake head coach Bill Persons. “We just have to rally around each other and support each other. Just meet the adversity and try to overcome it. It was just a matter of finding what work defensively against them and ultimately when we found it they just bought into it.”
Right out of the break, Kiera Brennan scored to give Silver Creek a double-digit lead, 24-13. The lead for Silver Creek did not last very long, the defense started to figure it out and the team got a huge lift from back-to-back Lily Woodis 3-pointers. At halftime, Chautauqua Lake only trailed by two, 24-22.
With Jacobson inserted back into the offense for the second half, Chautauqua Lake looked poised to take over the game. The Lady T’birds only senior, Kyleigh Perdue, came up with a big 3-pointer to open the quarter and grabbed back the lead.
“We came out with a lot of power,” Jacobson said about their start to the second half. “We had a good halftime talk and we really pushed forward. Personally, I didn’t think about my fouls.”
Silver Creek tried their best to keep up with Chautauqua Lake’s revived offense, but clearly the momentum had completely shifted even while the score was close, at 32-29, in the Lady T’birds favor. After a couple of timeouts the pace of the game still would not change and Chautauqua Lake held a 36-33 lead into the final quarter.
“Lex is like the motor of our team,” Coach Persons said about Jacobson. “She does a great job for us and she just gets other kids around her going even more. Defensively she just locks people down and you can really put her on anybody and she’ll give you everything she’s got.”
In what had been the Black Knights best quarter all season long, the fourth quarter, they couldn’t have possibly picked a worse time to have their worst one. Silver Creek only managed one point while the game was still in hand and a late bucket at five seconds for a grand total of three points.
“Well we were more exhausted in the fourth quarter, Chautauqua Lake is the kind of team that just goes, goes, goes,” stated Coach Rice. “The girls had really exhausted themselves at that point. We could have helped ourselves if we would have slowed it down on the offensive sets earlier, but we didn’t. So we were running offensively with them and trying to keep up defensively. I think by the time we got to the fourth quarter, they didn’t really have much else to give.”
Chautauqua Lake completely dominated the final quarter as they punched their ticket to the Class C1 championship game, on Saturday, against 5-seed Falconer, at JCC. Offensively they were led by Lily Woodis with 16 points on three 3-pointers, Rebecca Henry had 14 points and nine rebounds, Jacobson only scored two on her own, but had nine assists and senior Kyleigh Perdue had 10 points and eight rebounds.
“They played great, they really stepped up,” Jacobson said about Woodis, Henry and Perdue. “Kyleigh, she really stepped up. Being a senior, she didn’t want the season to end.”
The Lady Thunderbirds quest for consecutive sectional titles will come on Saturday and the team has what it takes to get the job done.
For consecutive years, Silver Creek has been eliminated by Chautauqua Lake. This year the game was much closer, yet was still disappointing. The Black Knights effort was led by Abby Rice with 10 points, 10 boards, four assists, four steals and four blocks, Kiera Brennan scored 11 points and Jaylah Cossin had seven points and five rebounds. Chloe Barrett added eight rebounds.