Girls basketball: Dixon stays unbeaten with OT win over Ottawa

OTTAWA – After a nip-and-tuck opening half, Dixon trailed Ottawa by 12 points with two minutes to play in the third quarter.

However, the Duchesses clawed back, holding the Pirates to a single basket over the final eight minutes and that sent the game to overtime.

From there, two free throws each by senior Katie Drew and sophomore Morgan Hargrave in the final 30 seconds helped improve Dixon to 8-0 on the season with a 40-38 win at Kingman Gymnasium.

“This team just never gives up and I feel that is something that is going to help us all season.”

—  Senior Katie Drew, Dixon girls basketball

“We work a lot on our free throws during practice, and I feel like it’s a staple of Dixon girls basketball to be able to make them all the time, but especially in the key moments,” said Drew, who finished with five points and four assists. “I was able to make my two, but then Morgan also stepped up and made her two which ended up being the winning points.”

“Our coaches do a great job, so we knew coming into tonight that Ottawa was going to use a lot of back screens and handoffs on offense. We struggled with it for most of the game, but I thought we did a great job of defending them late in the fourth quarter and overtime. This team just never gives up and I feel that is something that is going to help us all season.”

Hargrave led Dixon with 11 points and three steals, Reese Dambman added 10 points and Ahmyrie McGowan hauled down 11 rebounds.

Ottawa (4-3) was by Skylar Dorsey’s 12 points on four 3-pointers, while Kendall Lowery added seven points, 12 rebounds and four steals. Hailey Larsen and Mary Stisser each scored six points, and Ella Schmitz had five assists.

Dixon was 9 of 14 from the free-throw stripe, while Ottawa was just 3 of 17.

“These girls just believe in themselves and the things we are trying to do,” Dixon coach Luke Ravlin said. “When you come Ottawa to play you know you’re going to be in for a battle and that was sure the case again tonight. I thought down 12 points late in the third quarter we did an excellent job on staying calm and stepping it up on both ends of the floor.

“Ottawa is a very hard team to prepare for and we only had one day to try and do that. They punish you for just one mistake defensively and offensively you have to be able to fight through screens. This was a solid win for us against an opponent that is going to win a lot of game this season.”

The teams were tied at 8-all after the opening quarter, but Ottawa - with a triple from Dorsey and back-to-back layups by Stisser and Lowery off Schmitz assists - closed out the second quarter on a 7-0 run to hold a 20-17 lead at halftime.

The Pirates netted 11 of the first 13 third-quarter points, and Stisser’s steal and layup put the hosts up 31-19 with 2:09 left in the quarter.

Dixon then used consecutive 3s from Dambman and four points from Hargrave to hold a one-point lead before a free throw by Lowery with a minute left in regulation tied the game at 34-all to eventually force the four-minute overtime period.

“We were coming off a tough loss on the road against Serena and we just haven’t been very good defensively so far,” Ottawa coach Brent Moore said. “We worked all practice (on Tuesday) on defense to just try and get back to basics and fundamentals. I thought we were phenomenal on the defensive end tonight, easily the best performance of the season.

“We have talked since the start of practices; we want to get better every day and this game was a big step for us. We were able to get to the rim, our spacing on offense was really good.

“Everything about tonight was really good in my mind except for two things. We folded a little bit under pressure and turned the ball over too many times when we had that (12-point) lead and not being able to hit our free throws was obviously the biggest key to the game.”

Dixon is back in action Thursday night at 7 p.m. hosting La Salle-Peru. Ottawa is off until entertaining Seneca at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday.