UPPER LAKE — It’s pretty hard to upstage a teammate’s 28-point performance, but Upper Lake High School junior guard Jayme Zimmerschied gave it her best shot Tuesday night as the fourth-seeded Cougars turned back their strongest challenger to date, the Mount Diablo Red Devils, 65-52, in the semifinals of the North Coast Section Division 5 girls basketball playoffs at Upper Lake.
The win puts the Cougars (28-1) into the Division 5 championship game Saturday night against No. 2 seed University High School (23-4) of San Francisco. The game tips off at 7 p.m. inside San Francisco’s Kezar Pavilion. It’s Upper Lake’s first section title game appearance since 1994 when then-senior point guard Annie Pivniska was running the Cougars’ offense.
“It’s really special for our community,” said Pivniska-Petrie, now the co-head coach at Upper Lake. “I told the girls don’t get caught up in all the other stuff, just take it one game at a time. We’ve been doing that all season and it’s worked really well for us.”
It’s obviously working really well for senior center Taylar Minnis, who scored 20 of her team-high 28 points in the first half, and for Zimmerschied, who finished with 17 points, including five of the Cougars’ six 3-pointers. The timing of those 3s was nothing short of huge. Every time the Red Devils (17-12) crept close in the second half, Zimmerschied answered — right away — by burying the three-ball.
“She’s totally bought into being our sixth man and understands her role,” Pivniska-Petrie said of Zimmerschied. “The other players understand her role, too.”
Lacking a consistent outside shooting game most of the season, the Cougars have apparently found it at exactly the right time, and largely because of Zimmerschied.
“What I like is she didn’t hit those shots early but she kept on shooting,” Pivniska-Petrie said.
And boy, did they start falling.
Of Zimmerschied’s five 3-pointers, the first tied the game at 21-21 late in the first quarter, the second put Upper Lake ahead to stay 26-24 early in the second quarter, and the third capped an 11-1 Upper Lake run to open the third quarter as the Cougars moved ahead 50-38 — their biggest lead of the game to that point. Moments earlier reserve Ashlyn Wurm banked in a 3-pointer to make it 47-38.
Zimmerschied’s fourth 3-pointer snapped a 6-0 Mount Diablo run that had cut Upper Lake’s lead to 50-44 late in the third quarter. Momentum appeared to be squarely behind the Red Devils when a wide open Zimmerschied pulled up and found all net with 55.7 seconds left in the period.
The Concord team made one last desperate run at Upper Lake midway through the fourth quarter, getting as close as 55-51 when Zimmerschied sank her final 3-pointer, a back-breaking shot with 4:55 left to play. Nya Marcks followed with a basket seconds later to make it 60-51.
When Mount Diablo’s sensational sophomore point guard, Natalie Dance, picked up her fifth foul down low trying to stop a Madison Noble shot with 2:29 to go, the Red Devils were cooked. Not only did they lose their best player and leading scorer (20 points), but Noble dropped in both free throws to give the Cougars a 62-51 cushion.
Kat Lopez-Geary added a free throw and Minnis, in a perfect finish for the Cougars, scored her final two points on a shot down low that swished through the net just before the 30-second possession clock expired.
Sandwiched between all of those clutch 3-pointers by Zimemrschied was a whole lot of Minnis, who had 13 of Upper Lake’s 23 first-quarter points.
“She was getting frustrated that she wasn’t getting calls,” co-head coach Raelene Cromwell said. “We called a timeout at one point and told her to just keep battling in there. She did,” Pivniska-Petrie added.
Mount Diablo became the latest team to have absolutely no answer for stopping Minnis down low as her teammates effectively worked the ball inside to her all night long — and not just one or two, but pretty much everyone who took the floor wearing an Upper Lake uniform.
“It’s so nice,” Pivniska-Petrie said of Minnis’ unmistakable presence in the paint.
While the Red Devils did everything they could to deny her the ball or clog up the middle, Minnis overcame any and all interference.
Upper Lake’s defense definitely jammed up the works against the Red Devils, who started fast as Dance scored 13 points in the first quarter and 17 in the first half, but only three in the second half before finally fouling out. Small and extremely quick just like her Upper Lake counterpart, Maddy Young, Dance was able get out and run in the open floor early and beat the Cougars by driving inside for some easy baskets and by pulling up for a pair of 3-pointers.
“We went to 1-2-2 zone to slow her down,” Pivniska-Petrie said. “And then we went to a 2-3 zone to take away their baseline 3-pointers.”
Mount Diablo hit six 3-pointers in the first half when there were seven lead changes. The final of those six cut Upper Lake’s lead to 39-37 at halftime.
After Upper Lake went to a 2-3 zone in the second half, the Red Devils didn’t hit a single 3-pointer the rest of the night although they attempted more than a dozen.
The Cougars held Mount Diablo without a basket of any kind for more than six minutes of the third quarter while building a 50-40 lead.
While there were no shortage of Upper Lake highlights, both on offense and defense, Pivniska-Petrie said she was most impressed with her team’s ability to keep its composure when the game got tight on several occasions, especially in the first half.
“I’m hard on my guards but they did a great job tonight,” Pivniska-Petrie said.
Young, a dual-sport winter athlete who is competing in the CIF State Wrestling Championships beginning Thursday in Bakersfield, finished with five points, a handful of assists and steals while delivering her usual brand of hard-nosed, non-stop play at both ends of the floor. The state tournament runs through Saturday, so depending on how the senior fares Thursday and Friday, her availability for the University game could be an issue.
Pivniska-Petrie isn’t worried.
“The stars will align for us,” Pivniska-Petrie said.
Perhaps they already have.
