The Madras High School Lady Buffs “Tri-Valley League Champions” are on their way to the Quarterfinals of the 2022 OSAA / OnPoint Community Credit Union 4A Girls Basketball State Championship.
Saturday Afternoon March 5th, the Lady Buffs Hosted Astoria in the First Round of the Playoffs and through much of the game they relied on a stout zone defense that none of their previous opponents had seen all year. The Lady Buffs came away victorious, winning 51-36. MHS and Tri-Valley Coach of the Year Jerin Say recapped the game. “We had a lot of time to prepare for this one and we hadn’t run the zone all season long and this is the perfect game to throw it at them and nobody has film of that except for maybe tonight. But coming in to this game we wanted to throw it at them and those girls worked so stinking hard on that zone, blocking out, rotating, communicating. It was such an awesome thing for me to see as a coach is everything come together right there. You know we had slow practices Friday, Monday, Tuesday kinda leading up ramping up and then Wednesday Thursday and Friday we had super intense super aggressive practices and they came out and showed tonight it was just perfect, leading right into this game. The 4th quarter got a little shaky you know I think they got a little tight but hey we’re working on things and they did enough to win in the 4th quarter.”
Next up for the Lady Buffs is 2nd ranked Cascade who only has 3 losses on the year, two of the losses were to League opponent and #1 Ranked Philomath and the other loss was to Silverton who is in the 5A state playoffs ranked 2nd. Tip off for the Lady Buffs and the Cougars is set for 8:45pm on Thursday March 10th at Marshfield High School in Coos Bay.
If the Lady Buffs upset the Cougars, they will move on to play Friday Night March 11th at 8:15pm. Should they fall to the Cougars, they will play the loser of the Corbett v. Baker game on Friday Morning March 11th at 10:45am.
