On Tuesday, Mar. 3, the West Potomac Girls Basketball team defeated Centerville 56-54 off of a last second three pointer by junior, Delores Harkless, to advance to tonight’s State Semifinals at 7pm against Manchester at Manchester High School.
Heading into tonight’s game West Po is 23-6 and 27th in the state while their opponent Manchester is 25-1 and 7th in the state. Offensively, West Po is led by their three guards, junior Delores Harkless, senior Dawn Houston and senior Abby Beddis. Additionally, West Po’s squad is highlighted by their two first team All-Region seniors Dawn Houston and Abby Beddis.
While the Harkless buzzer beater capped off an impressive win, West Po’s comeback against Centerville was due to the team’s resilience in the face of pressure.
“We just stayed in the game and didn’t get down on ourselves and our teammates when mistakes were made,” junior Delores Harkless said.
This resilience is one of the many aspects from West Po’s win against Centerville that they hope to carry into tonight’s game.
“Just play hard honestly I think even though we were down in the 4th quarter, we kept fighting and were able to comeback and I think that’s a huge takeaway,” Dawn Houston senior captain said.
Along with the team’s resilience West Po was able to capitalize off their defense holding Centerville to only nine points in the 4th quarter. Defense will be key to beating Manchester tonight as Manchester averages 66.9 ppg.
“I think our defense was really good and we did a very good job on their best players and obviously they’re gonna score and they’re gonna play high level basketball but I think we did a good job at controlling them [Centerville],” Houston said.
The girls have high expectations heading into tonight’s State Semifinal and hope to stick to their game and execute the defense and offenses they’ve worked on throughout the course of the season.
“Obviously Manchester is a really good team, but I think if we play like we did against Centerville we will be able to get a win,” Kaitlyn Marshall senior forward said. “We just need to stick with what we’re good at. We’ve been working on specific offenses and specific defenses and we just need to make sure that we’re perfecting what we’ve been practicing.”
After hours of watching film and studying the scouting report the girls team is ready to win tonight and advance to the State Championships.
“We obviously want to win tonight. That’s the biggest thing but we know we’ve watched them and we know from our scouting report they have a couple good kids on the team but they’re similar to when we played Paul VIth earlier this year so I think it’ll be a really great match up,” Houston said.
This season has been another historic one for West Po Girls Basketball as it’s the first season ever that the girls have gone to the State tournament back to back.
“It’s really exciting [to be in the State Semifinals] this is the first time in West Po girls basketball history that we’ve been to states back to back and [Centerville] was our second state win that we’ve had,” Marshall said.
Regardless of the outcome of tonight’s game the team is excited of how far they’ve come this season.
“It feels really good to [to be in the State Semifinals] especially having come off a really great game on Tuesday so im just really excited to play again and hopefully keep our season going for one last game,” Houston said.
