Best Game of the Year

Due to our buzzer beater loss to Cuero earlier in the month, we were forced to play a tie-breaking game against Yoakum to see who was going to get second in district. If we won, our first playoff opponent would be Somerset, a team with close to an identical record as we have. If we lost, we would face Marion who was standing at 23-5 for the year.

For several days, I had coaches and teachers alike asking me how I felt going into the game. My response was always, "It's a 50-50 shot at winning the game."

Little did I know how prophetic those words were. It was an emotionally challenging game that our girls wanted perhaps more than they had wanted a game all year. And for the first half of the game, you could tell the jitters were there as Yoakum controlled the game for the whole first half. But somehow, as poorly as we shot the ball in the first half, were were only down three points at halftime.

We fell down by as many as 7 points in the fourth quarter before things finally started clicking for us. We were not perfect down the stretch, but we made enough big plays and hit free throws at just the right time to send the game into overtime. Again we dropped down in the overtime period, but again made just enough plays to have a shot at winning the game with 13 seconds to go.

The rest is where legends are born. Bianca Esqueda hit a baseline shot as time expired to give us the one point victory in overtime and a better seed going into the playoffs.



It might be worth looking at that winning shot again. First in regular speed and then again in slow motion.