By Laura Amato
The motto was the same all season – trust the process.
The McClancy girls basketball team did just that, battling early-season injuries and miscues and finding a rhythm when it mattered most, en route to a second-straight CHSAA championship. The Lady Crusaders defeated top-seeded Fotbonne Hall 55-50 in the ‘A’ championship game Saturday afternoon.
“It means everything in the world. This is what we focused on from the beginning,” McClancy coach Dewey Hopkins said. “The girls worked hard to get here and they believed in the motto ‘trust the process.’ We kept telling them, the bear climbing the mountain is hungrier than the bear at the top of the mountain. And we were climbing all year.”
It wasn’t an easy game for McClancy, which struggled to find its shooting rhythm several times during the first half. The Lady Crusaders didn’t connect on a basket for the first 4 1/2 minutes of the second quarter and went into the break trailing Fontbonne by one.
Still, the squad stayed confident, certain that, after the last few weeks, it had been battle-tested enough to handle just about anything.
“We knew [Fontbonne was] an undefeated team, but we knew we could beat them,” point guard Leandra Ortiz said. “Beating an undefeated team is a pretty good motivator.”
Fontbonne topped McClancy twice during the regular season, but the Lady Crusaders switched things up in the third matchup, opting to play man-to-man instead of their usual zone. It was more than enough to set the Bonnies back on their collective heels and, most importantly, made it difficult for Fontbonne’s backcourt to connect on late-game shots.
Brittany Stenz tied up the game at 48-all for McClancy with three minutes left, but it was Ortiz who ended up playing hero for the Lady Crusaders.
The sophomore connected on a three-pointer with 1:36 on the clock, giving McClancy a lead it would never again surrender.
“If I know I have the shot, I just take it,” Ortiz said. “I didn’t really think about it. It feels great. It feels really, really good.”
Ortiz did a bit of everything for the Lady Crusaders, racking up 19 points and directing an offense that out-scored Fontbonne 16-7 in the fourth quarter.
“I usually would never make a statement like this, but she was the MVP of my team,” Hopkins said. “We put a lot of pressure on them to get better and be better and she really embraced all of that.”
Fontbonne had two looks at a game-tying shot, but the Bonnies turned the ball over and Breanne McDonnell’s three-point attempt with 13.1 seconds didn’t hit the rim.
McClancy wrapped up the victory from the free throw line – going 4-for-6 from the stripe in the final 17.5 seconds of play – and the Lady Crusaders were nothing but smiles after the victory.
Of course, that victory had been the plan from the very beginning. McClancy wanted this title and despite coming up short to Fontbonne during the regular season, the Lady Crusader’s confidence never wavered. They simply trusted each other.
“We knew this was going to be a tough game,” Hopkins said. “The last five games we’ve been fully healthy and we haven’t been fully healthy all year. We just told the girls, ‘We only have to be better than them one day.’”
