MIDDLETOWN — Kamryn Atkin’s job is to clean the boards and the Middletown High School junior did that and a little bit more Wednesday night as the Mustangs held on to beat the Fort Bragg Timberwolves 31-28 in a down-to-the-wire North Coast Section Division 4 first-round girls basketball playoff game at Middletown High School.
Atkins went to the free-throw line with Middletown’s season hanging in the balance with 1:21 left to play and the Mustangs clinging to a 28-26 lead by their fingernails. Fort Bragg was on a 7-0 run and momentum was clearly in the Timberwolves’ favor when Atkins pulled down a big defensive rebound and drew a foul, sending her to the stripe for a one-and-one. A small but loud Fort Bragg rooting section made all the noise it could as Atkins set up to shoot the ball, but she calmly knocked down both shots to make it 30-26.
“Those were our two biggest free throws of the year,” a relieved Middletown head coach Andy Brown said after watching the Mustangs beat the Timberwolves for a third time this season. “Kamryn took care of the boards for us, but those free throws were huge.”
The undefeated North Central League I champions (19-5) swept the home-and-away series with the Timberwolves in league play although each meeting was closer than the last.
“It’s actually the fourth time we’ve faced them this season,” Brown said. “We also scrimmaged against them before the season. You can only play a league team so many times before they end up beating you. I told them after we beat them here (a 49-44 win on Jan. 22) that I was glad we didn’t have to play them again.”
Little did the two teams know they would be paired together in the opening round of the Division 4 playoffs, but the fifth-seeded Mustangs and 12th-seeded Timberwolves (18-8) were destined to play one more time as things turned out. And this one was the closest of all.
“I know I don’t have to play them again, at least not this year, and I’m happy about that,” Brown said.
Middletown had numerous opportunities to put Fort Bragg away after scoring the first five points of the fourth quarter to go up 28-19, including a 3-pointer by Paige Astley to open the period, but with 5:59 still left to play, the Mustangs simply stopped scoring.
“We had our chances but missed a lot of shots,” Brown said.
Fort Bragg wasn’t exactly an offensive dynamo either down the stretch, but Timberwolves pecked away at Middletown’s lead, scoring a basket and getting two free throws from Lucy Hendricks with 3:26 left to make it 28-23. Then things got real tight when the Timberwolves nailed a 3-pointer with 2:27 remaining. Brown called a timeout to calm things down but Middletown missed the front end of a one-and-one when play resumed. Fortunately Fort Bragg missed a 3-pointer that would have given them the lead. The Timberwolves grabbed the offensive rebound but turned the ball over.
Middletown missed a shot in the paint with 1:34 remaining but Fort Bragg reciprocated a few seconds later when Atkins was fouled rebounding that miss.
There was still plenty of excitement left after Atkins made her two free throws. Fort Bragg turned the ball over but Astley missed a 3-pointer with 40.6 seconds to go. Fort Bragg missed another shot but got the offensive rebound and scored with 14.5 seconds remaining to slice Middletown’s lead to 30-28. Astley took the inbounds pass and was immediately fouled by the Timberwolves, their 10th team foul of the half, which put Middletown into the double bonus. With fans on both sides going nuts, the Middletown senior stepped to the line, missed her first shot but sank the second to give the Mustangs a three-point cushion.
Fort Bragg rushed the ball down the court and missed a 3-pointer that Hendricks rebounded. She was fouled in the process with .3 seconds showing on the clock, went to the line and missed two free throws. As the second miss came off the rim, the buzzer sounded and the Mustangs had punched their ticket to a quarterfinal-round matchup with No. 4 seed Gateway (21-4) on Saturday at 3 p.m. at the Kezar Pavilion in San Francisco.
“I was so worried about beating Fort Bragg again that I really didn’t look ahead,” Brown said of Saturday’s quarterfinal-round road game. “I just wanted to beat Fort Bragg. Their coach (Tim Anderson) has been coaching a long time and he knows how to attack teams and exploit their weaknesses.”
Fort Bragg really doesn’t run a conventional offense so much as it takes advantage of an aggressive defense to create scoring opportunities wherever they come.
“They create chaos,” Brown said when asked to describe what the Timberwolves do best.
The game had practically no flow to it, there were numerous turnovers by both teams, many of them unforced, and jump ball after jump ball as players from both sides wrestled for possession of loose balls throughout the night.
Only one player managed to reach double digits in the scoring column, Middletown freshman Mia Hoogendoorn (11 points), while Hendricks led the Timberwolves with nine points.
In the end, it really didn’t matter because the playoffs are all about reaching the next round, regardless of how you do it.
“I can’t expect a better defensive effort than what we gave tonight,” Brown said of the 28 points allowed by the Mustangs. “And we did just enough (on offense) to win.”
