T-Birds triumph in semi-final
Mesa Community College women’s basketball won their semi-final playoff game against Glendale Community College Thursday night, and will host Pima Community College Saturday night in the Region I, DII championship game.
The Thunderbirds and Guachos had matched up twice during the regular season. Both games resulted in an MCC victory by 10 or more points. Thursday night’s result was no different, a seemingly dominant victory by the lady T-Birds with a final score of 63-50.
MCC was led by Arizona Community College Athletic Conference D2 player of the year Jayla Johnson. Johnson started off slow, but after catching fire in the second quarter, ended with a game high 19 points.
“It’s all a mindset, I knew I didn’t score and I was off,” said Johnson, “but I just knew I had to keep shooting and keep fighting for my team because we all want to fight together and fight for each other and that’s all I had in my mind.” In typical fashion, MCC dominated on defense in the first half, holding GCC to only 18 points. What was uncharacteristic was the offensive increase seen in the second half where the Gauchos scored 16 points in each of the final two quarters.
“When you play with nothing to lose, you play to win and have fun, and you’re going to go out fighting and they’re going to hit shots. They were going to go out fighting and they went out fighting,” said assistant coach Sam Stevens.
Early in the 4th quarter, the Gauchos were able to mount a comeback which cut the lead to five. Helping spark that comeback was guard Jahleza Clark who had eight points in the 4th quarter and 17 total points in the game. However, they were able to weather the storm due to their experienced coaching staff.
“We all took a deep breath, coach Kori told us to just remain composed and we just went out there and tried to execute staying composed in the moment,” said Johnson.
By finishing the regular season winning 13 of their final 15 games, the T-Birds were able to secure the very important number one seed in the D2 postseason. This guaranteed them home court advantage throughout the playoffs and in the championship game.
“It’s always good to have home court advantage because you have more fans here. We’re lucky because we have great relationships with other teams at Mesa,” said Stevens, “we had great representation from softball, and softball players get loud and wild and they just help the atmosphere, so anything we can do to play in an atmosphere that is supportive of us.”
The PCC Aztecs and T-Birds met twice during the regular season, each winning one game. The same night MCC advanced to the championship game, PCC also booked their ticket to the big game with a victory over Scottsdale Community College.
The championship game will be held at Theo Heap Gym at MCC with a tip off at 7 p.m. The winner of this game will not only be the ACCAC DII champions, but will also play in the NJCAA DII national tournament in mid March.
