By Phil Murphy
DigitalSports.com
(Look below the story for video highlights and post-game interviews from Friday’s game.)
On Langley’s team roster, senior Kate Hansan is listed as standing 5-feet, 3-inches tall.
That is a lie. Or, at least, an extreme exaggeration.
Hansan readily admits she is only 4-feet-11, which often makes her the shortest player on the court by a visible margin.
But the Saxons’ pocket-sized point guard could not have been larger in the first half of Friday’s game at McLean, scoring 10 of her game-high 13 points to lead Langley to a season sweep of rival McLean, 43-37, in front of a standing-room-only crowd.
“Last game, I hit a three for the first time in a while,” Hansan said. “And I had all the confidence that I could shoot the ball well today. And after I hit my first two, I just kept shooting and they fell for me tonight.”
In a remarkably physical contest, the Saxons put the clamps on the Highlander offense early and held them to just two first-half field goals.
“It was really intense because you would get the ball and then just get hit,” McLean guard Andie Romness said. “You’d get it again and you would then just get hit. You just had to keep going and push through it.”
Having made four times that many baskets in the first half themselves, Langley held a 21-11 advantage at the break.
In response, the Highlanders (10-6 overall, 5-3 Liberty District) rallied behind freshman Romness in a late surge — much as the Saxons utilized the services of freshman Audrey Dotson in a 45-38 overtime win at McLean on Dec. 21. Romness scored seven of her team-high nine points in the second half as the Highlanders cut the lead to two points on four different occasions in the fourth quarter.
“[I used] my speed and just pushed through them to get the basket,” Romness said.
But despite having possession the ball with a chance to tie or take the lead on three of those four opportunities, McLean failed to capitalize, and Langley (9-6, 6-2) was able to pull away in the games’ final moments.
“We held it together as a team and kept each other going,” Hansan said. “We knew that if we stopped them on defense we always have a chance to put the lead back up. We had huge free throws by Rachel [Warrick] at the end and people started knocking down shots after we went cold for a little bit.
“We knew that if we kept shooting the ball and kept playing like we had been, we would end up on top.”
Email: pmurphy@digitalsports.com
Langley 10 11 7 15 — 43
McLean 4 7 10 16 — 37
Langley — Hansan 4 3-4 13; Dotson 3 5-6 11; Warrick 3 4-6 10; Shea 2 0-1 4; Kody 1 1-4 4; Benson 0 1-2 1. McLean — Romness 2 3-5 9; Stillman 2 2-2 8; Altmeyer 1 5-8 7; Belardi 2 0-0 5; Zimmerman 2 1-4 5; Flint 1 0-0 2. Three-pointers — Langley 3 (Hansan 2, Kody); McLean 5 (Romness 2, Stillman 2, Belardi).
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