I-A GIRLS: Boulder City, Desert Pines advance to final

With a little more than four minutes left in Thursday’s Division I-A Southern Region semifinal, Boulder City point guard Katlyn Davis scored on a layup and immediately looked at Eagles coach Paul Dosch.

She couldn’t help but just smile, as her bucket gave the Sunrise League’s No. 1 seed a comfortable 17-point lead over Clark. At that point, it was pretty clear Boulder City was headed to Saturday’s championship game.

Using an array of dazzling passes in the second half, Daly helped lead the Eagles to a 58-33 victory at Sunrise Mountain. Boulder City outscored Clark 35-7 in the second half, including a dominating 22-2 fourth quarter.

Daly finished with 11 points, 13 assists, seven steals and three rebounds for the Eagles (22-4), who meet surprising Desert Pines (8-20) in the final at 6 p.m. Saturday at Sunrise Mountain. Both teams clinched berths in next week’s state tournament in Reno.

“Katlyn Daly can flat-out play,” Dosch said. “In my opinion, (she is) one of the most underrated point guards in the south. I’ll take her on my team all day long.

“She’s our general. We go as she goes. She does do a great job of seeing the whole floor and her teammates. (She knows) where they need to be, before they know where they need to be.”

Senior guard Jana Williams led Boulder City with 14 points and eight rebounds, and Alyssa Ybarra added 11 points and six rebounds.

“It was really a team thing, and for me I just played my heart out because this team means the world to me,” Williams said. “I’d give anything for these girls. I just knew we had to bring it, and I really wanted it and I think we won it as a team.”

Clark (15-9) used a 13-3 run in the second quarter to open up a 26-17 lead and appeared to have the superior athleticism for most of the first half. The Eagles, however, scored the final six points of the half to cut the deficit to three points and carried the momentum over to the second half.

“At halftime, I told them to play harder, stronger and smarter,” Dosch said. “We try to keep it simple, do the small things.”

Senior Whitney Barlow had six points, including two second-chance baskets off her own rebounds, during the Eagles’ 9-1 run to start the second half. Clark was stifled from the field, scoring its five third-quarter points from the free-throw line.

The Chargers scored just one field goal the entire second half, at the 3:10 mark of the fourth quarter once the game was out of reach.

“They’re young; we’ve got a lot of juniors, a lot of sophomores, they’ve never been in this position and they were nervous,” Clark coach Mike Moulchin said. “They played a great first half, we actually had a good game plan for the first half — it worked. We had another game plan for the second half that never materialized. Credit Boulder City, they picked it up and turned it up a notch.”

Desert Pines 51, Western 48 — At Sunrise Mountain, Deisy Lozano drained a go-ahead 3-pointer with 59 seconds left in regulation, and the Jaguars staved off a furious fourth-quarter rally to beat the Warriors.

Trailing by 12 points at halftime and 10 after three quarters, Western (18-10) held Desert Pines scoreless for three minutes while going on a 11-0 run to take a 44-43 lead with 3:32 left in the game.

After Capricia Pierce’s one-handed floater from 5 feet out tied the game at 46 with 2:11 left, the teams went scoreless until Lozano knocked down her 3 directly in front of her team’s bench. Christian Myles followed that with a layup to give the Jaguars a 51-46 lead with 51.7 seconds to go.

Western’s Destiny Gonzalez hit two late free throws to provide the final margin as the Warriors couldn’t convert on their last-ditch effort with 9.6 seconds left.

Myles led the Jaguars with 19 points, and See’Airrah Evans added 10 points.

Gonzalez led all scorers with 20 points and nine rebounds, and Guadalupe Herrera contributed 14 points.