(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Timpview celebrates the win. Timpview defeated Skyline 56-49 in their semifinal game of the 5A High School Girls' Basketball Tournament at SLCC in Taylorsville, Friday, Feb. 23, 2018.
Taylorsville • On those long, sometimes boring winter afternoons when the Timpview girls’ basketball team lacked intensity, coach Aimee Dorais knew exactly what to do.
“All I had to say was ‘Skyline. Third quarter,’ and they would self correct,” she said.
The young Thunderbirds remembered that third period from a year ago well Friday as they beat those same Skyline Eagles in the same round where disaster struck a season ago.
The Thunderbirds exorcised those demons by beating the defending champions 56-49 in an epic Class 5A state tournament semifinal battle.
“Skyline is an amazing team,” said Timpview star Ella Pope, one of five junior starters. “I have teammates on that team, and I have coaches on that team. They knocked us out last year. … This shows how far we have come as a team. You don’t get to play a team again in the tournament very often.”
Pope did a bit of everything. She scored 14 points, hauled down nine rebounds, dished out six assists and had a block and a steal. Perhaps most important, she did a fine job defending Eagles star Madison Grange, who is headed to Utah Valley.
It wasn’t as if Skyline didn’t try some third-quarter magic again this year. After a lackluster first half, the Eagles came out battling with a fiery intensity. With Kate Vorwaller scoring all 11 of her points in that quarter, the Eagles managed to cut Timpview’s 25-17 halftime lead to just one point.
But there was no panic this time for Timpview as players such as Shalyn Fano, Jazzy Espinoza and Madelyn Boulton calmly repelled every Skyline rally.
“Part of our mental toughness training is just having a ton of scorers,” Dorais said. “They see it every day as the ball goes in the hoop. They just keep playing their game. Skyline is really good, and really good teams make runs. Can we keep ourselves calm even when they were making runs?”
The answer was yes. The Thunderbirds deployed different defenses that kept Skyline from getting comfortable. The Eagles did not hit a single one of their nine 3-point attempts.
While Grange, Kiana Eskelson and Vorwaller all scored in double figures, nothing was easy.
Skyline coach Lynette Schroeder probably expressed the biggest reason her team fell.
“We lost the battle on the boards,” she said, referring to a 40-25 advantage to Timpview that included a 15-9 deficit on the offensive glass. “We gave them too many second-chance opportunities.”
Of course the biggest second chance opportunity was seeing Timpview a second year in a row in the semifinals.
This time, Timpview didn’t blow it in the third quarter.
TIMPVIEW 56, SKYLINE 49 <br>• Timpview uses a big rebounding advantage to avenge a loss to defending state champion Skyline in last season’s state semifinals. <br>• Ella Pope leads the balanced Thunderbirds with 14 points and nine rebounds. <br>• Madison Grange, Kate Vorwaller and Kiana Eskelson all finish in double figures for Skyline.