MP suffers ?quirky? loss to Demons

WASHINGTON ? Regan Enfield stuffed Mt. Pleasant senior Taylor Shull?s last-second full-court heave, and No. 13 Washington held off the rival Panthers for a 47-46* win on Friday night.

?It feels pretty good to block Taylor Shull,? Enfield said.

Washington junior Johannah Vittetoe put back a missed shot with 1:27 remaining to give the Demons a five-point lead ? their largest of the game ? and they held on in the final minute and a half despite not scoring another point.

?That?s what I had been working on before this game,? Vittetoe said of the offensive putback. ?Me and Coach [Jay] Zieglowsky had been talking about how I could score points off of offensive rebounds. I guess that?s just one of those times where I beat her to the spot. She looked to her left and I went to the right and got the rebound and went back up.?

Even though Mt. Pleasant had four girls on its roster listed at six feet or taller and the Demons don?t have a single player that tall, Washington out-rebounded the Panthers 36-23 in Friday?s game.

?I talked and talked and talked in practice the last few days, telling them, ?I can?t coach you to have heart. I can coach you to dribble and shoot and pass, but you either have heart or you don?t have it,?? Washington head coach Phil Long said. ?I said, ?People who have heart play five inches bigger than they really are.? Boy, I thought our kids just showed a ton of heart.?

Shull scored a left-handed layup with 51 seconds remaining to trim Washington?s lead to three, but then the Panthers, who had just three team fouls, spent the next 20 seconds trying to accumulate enough fouls to send the Demons to the line. Finally, Vittetoe got free, but missed a layup. After the Panthers missed a shot inside, they sent Washington junior Beth Dillon to the free-throw line for a one-and-one. Dillon missed, and Shull tried a three-pointer at the other end. She missed, but her younger sister, Taryne Shull, put back the miss to trim the lead to one with five seconds left.

The Panthers fouled Washington junior Lauren Kimball with three seconds left, and Kimball missed the front end of the one-and-one. Taryne Shull tossed the rebound to Taylor Shull, but her full-court heave was blocked by Enfield.

?She got her hand up and she got it,? said Taylor Shull, who scored a game-high 24 points. ?It would have been a miracle if I had made it anyway, but you?ve got to give it a chance.?

Vittetoe said it was the perfect ending for Enfield to swat away Shull?s chance at a game-winner.

?Obviously there?s a chance it could have gone in, but it didn?t,? Vittetoe said. ?For Regan to put her hand up there and just get that ball is the best ending to the game you could have asked for.?

The Panthers (5-5, 2-2 Southeast Conference) simply ran out of time.

?We were one steal and one shot away from being there,? Mt. Pleasant head coach Joanna Settles said.

Senior Lauren Vittetoe led the Demons (8-2, 4-0 SEC) with 15 points. Enfield added nine, and Johannah Vittetoe had eight points and seven rebounds.

The win was a big confidence-booster for Washington, which, in its first game without injured leading scorer Sydney Greiner, had lost by 20 points at Ottumwa on Tuesday.

?I guess it was a big thing to make us believe in ourselves,? Johannah Vittetoe said. ?Sydney, who?s out, writes ?believe? on her wrist for every game. She always put the faith in us to believe in ourselves, but even though she didn?t play tonight we all still believed. Whether we had that girl who had ?believe? written on her wrist or not, we all still believed. So I guess this game makes us believe that we can still win a game no matter who we play.?

Long said it was important that his squad gained that confidence.

?I couldn?t be happier for a bunch of kids who I thought grew a lot tonight,? he said. ?I hope they believe as much as I do now because I know they can compete.?

*Editor?s note: The official game score is 49-46 in favor of the Demons.

During the second quarter, Washington?s official scorekeeper awarded two extra points to the Demons when a foul was called on the ground on a layup that went in. The shooter then made two free throws, and all four points were recorded for Washington when it should have been two.

?There were other factors in the game, and we had oppotunities to win,? Settles said. ?But I want to be (beaten) by real points, not fake ones.?

While the error does not affect the outcome of the game, it did affect the Panthers? momentum and strategy during the game, which may have changed the outcome.

However, the team cannot appeal to the state ? the score is set as soon as the officials walk off the court.

?It was a very weird game, a really quirky game,? Settles said.