With four seconds left in a tie game, Juneau-Douglas High School senior Tona Fogg knew the ball was coming to her.
The Crimson Bears forward seized the opportunity and rattled in the game-winning basket to put her team up 40-38 over the Thunder Mountain High School Girls basketball team on Friday, etching another epic chapter in the competitions between Juneau’s two high schools.
“Normally we throw a long pass but this time coach wanted to hit me coming off the screen.” Fogg said. “I knew the ball was coming. It was a pressure situation. We had three seconds, and all coach told me to do was ‘make the layup.’”
Fogg led her team with 10 points, freshman Caitlin Pusich added nine and senior Kallen Hoover contributed seven in the win.
Thunder Mountain had a chance to engineer their own late win, and had the ball in their best scorer’s hands with 20 seconds left. TMHS senior Ava Tompkins, who had been driving and scoring seemingly at will for much of the second half, swung the ball to junior Alondra Echiverri, who was trapped by three JDHS players and stripped of the ball. JDHS moved the ball past half court and called a timeout, giving time to draw up a game-winning play.
The Falcons’ Tompkins led all scorers with 19. Junior Alondra Echiverri had nine and freshman Nina Fenumiai added four.
TMHS coach Tanya Nizich has grown accustom to the foul-laden and contentious games that this rivalry always seems to provoke.
“I feel like this is déjà vu from a few weeks ago,” Nizich said. “They out-worked us, and the hardest working team wins in circumstances like this. We’re very even teams with similar personalities and it comes down to who’s gonna make the fewest mistakes and work the hardest all the way to the buzzer.”
The first half was a foul frenzy, with both teams getting into the bonus with more than five minutes left. JDHS would outscore TMHS by seven in the second quarter, with a nine-point run helping the Crimson Bears to a 21-12 halftime lead.
TMHS coach Nizich said they “cleaned up some things” in the locker room, and came out in the third ready to play. The Falcons threw a 3-2 zone and full-court press at the Crimson Bears, which stifled their competition in the third quarter as TMHS was able to outscore JDHS 17-9 in that period. The game was within one point for most of the fourth quarter.
JDHS shot 7-of-15 from the free throw line, while TMHS hit 14-of-24 on their foul shots.
Thunder Mountain played Juneau’s Crimson Bears this Friday at TMHS. Juneau-Douglas won 40-38.
