ONALASKA — Any given night can be someone’s turn in the spotlight.
For the Onalaska High School girls basketball team, it wasn’t their usual suspect. Rather, it was a defensive-minded senior that was silent for the first three quarters on Tuesday night only to come alive in the final eight minutes.
Randi Haight scored all eight of her points in the fourth, starting with a 3-pointer that gave the Loggers the lead for good and ending with the deciding free throw to give them a 46-45 triumph at home over Toledo in a C2BL thriller.
“She hasn’t had to step up on offense most times; that’s not something we ask her to do every single night,” Onalaska head coach Alana Olson said. “Her offense, that was the difference in the game.”
The league itself has six of the eight teams with double digit victories and all but one sitting above the .500 threshold, two weeks out from the Class 2B District 4 tournament. Onalaska’s win makes things topsy-turvy in the standings.
Napavine is the last perfect team at 4-0. The Loggers join Adna and Toledo with one loss while Toutle Lake and Morton-White Pass have two.
“I was really proud of how we battled through adversity,” Olson said. “Both teams were physical. That was tight for sure, all the way down to the wire. Toledo does not go away.”
Fourteen of the 16 fourth quarter points were scored by Onalaska (9-5, 2-1 C2BL) seniors. Renzy Marshall scored the first four before fouling out, then Kaiyah Sandridge’s two free throws put it up 36-35, its first lead since late in the first stanza.
Toledo had an answer on a Ryah Stanley trifecta to regain the advantage. After a couple looks at the rim, the ball swung to Haight in the corner who buried the go-ahead 3-pointer for another one-point cushion.
Leading scorer Emalie Jacoby, who ended the night with a team-best 11 points, didn’t register a bucket in the last quarter.
“She is a great passer and she wants to do whatever it takes for her team to win,” Olson said. “I am incredibly proud of everyone stepping up.”
“She is a great player,” Riverhawks head coach Brian Layton added. “They are tough. They are not a one-girl show.”
Toledo (10-3, 2-1) cut the deficit to a possession with 57 seconds to go. It had committed just one foul to that point, but Layton opted not to play the foul game. Haight and Sidney Kruger exchanged baskets, which killed exactly 40 seconds of clock.
Then the Riverhawks used up their four fouls to give. They sent Haight to the line with 11 seconds remaining.
“Let’s play them straight up, maybe we can get a steal, hold them to a possession and then we can set up a (shot),” Layton said. “We executed what we wanted to do. They made some big free throws.”
She split the free throws and Stanley’s 3-pointer just before the buzzer proved to be too late. The Riverhawks senior led them with 20 points and Kailea Lairson chipped in 11. Those two plus Sidney Kruger and Ellie Fallon all pulled down at least six rebounds.
Fallon left the game in the fourth after colliding with an Onalaska player. She was out for the last 5:18 of the game.
“She is a big presence,” Layton said. “Thought the other girls did a good job stepping up.”
On the strength of a 12-2 run, the Riverhawks nabbed slight control of the contest and kept their opposition off the scoreboard for five-plus minutes. Still, they never led by more than five in the second half and only came away with five steals.
Onalaska, with its size disadvantage down low, created second-chance opportunities and forced plenty of turnovers, 17 to be exact.
“Rebounding is a mentality and in the second half, that was more us,” Olson said.
Marshall scored 10 for the Loggers and Sandridge added six. They hit the homestretch of the regular season, starting next week on the road versus Morton-White Pass.
“This was a huge league win,” Olson said. “We’re all battling for every inch in this league. Whether it was how we expected it to go or not, I am really proud of the girls.”
For Toledo, it gets another chance at a signature victory when defending league champ Adna comes to town on Thursday.
“It was a tough one, a game that could have gone either way,” Layton said. “We know every game is important. We’ll flush it out.”
