Silverdale's Rachel Sanders (40) and Emily Harkleroad (11) congratulate Megan Lewis (2) who made the game-winning 3-point shot in overtime to defeat Boyd-Buchanan 45-44 Thursday at Silverdale High School.If Silverdale Baptist Academy junior wing Megan Lewis had the goal in mind of going past the 1,000-point mark in her high school career in Thursday's District 5-A girls' basketball game at Silverdale, then she achieved it with her final basket against Boyd-Buchanan.
By the way, that basket came from behind the 3-point line with two seconds left in overtime and lifted the Lady Seahawks past the Lady Buccaneers 45-44 in a key early-season district game.
Silverdale (10-3, 3-1) lost when it played Arts & Sciences, which Boyd-Buchanan (7-2, 1-1) beat in its district-opener. Now every team in the league has a loss.
"This kind of ties everything back up," Silverdale coach Tim Thompson said. "CSAS is fast. Boyd is big. We're going to have to come up with better game plans the next time."
The Lady Seahawks came out of a timeout with 10.2 seconds to go in overtime and managed to get the ball to Lewis, who rubbed off teammate Sydney Smith.
"They double-teamed Sydney and that left me wide open," Lewis said.
She was open, but was well behind the arc when she made her sixth 3-pointer of the game, leaving her with 20 points on the night and 1,003 in her career. Anticipating the possibility of Lewis reaching the milestone, Thompson had ready a commemorative basketball, which she was presented after the game.
"We just wanted to pin Megan's girl down and try and get her a shot," Thompson said. "Obviously she's our best shooter."
Boyd-Buchanan, which sent the game to OT on Maddie Abed's buzzer-beating jumper from the left corner, got a timeout called after Lewis's field goal with 1.8 seconds showing. However, they were unable to get off a shot when play resumed.
The game looked like anything but headed to overtime when SBA led 22-6 late in the first half. But the Lady Bucs fought back to within 29-27 at the end of three quarters and took their only lead in regulation on a 3-point shot by Madison Balthrop to start the fourth-quarter scoring. Balthrop scored nine of her 15 points, which were all in the second half, in the third-quarter rally.
"I think our defense stepped it up a little," Boyd-Buchanan coach Tracey Walker said of what started the comeback. "And we took our big girl, Maddie Wright, and moved her out to the short corner. I think that gave her a little bit better look. They were double-teaming her in the post. Also a couple of other kids stepped up and started hitting some shots."
Wright was the focal point of Silverdale's surrounding zone defense because another of Boyd-Buchanan's season scoring leaders, Marissa McCalla, was out with a concussion.
"She's just basketball smart," Walker said of McCalla, who is expected to be back playing soon. "She's a very versatile player and a little bit more of a threat than some of the others. She can take some of the defense away from Maddie. It's hard to guard both of them down low."
Still, Wright totaled 14 points and 15 rebounds.
"We like to play a 3-2 extended, but we couldn't," Thompson said. "We had to sit in Maddie's lap. When she got alone, she scored. I told the girls they're going to feel bad everytime a kid drops a 3, but if we don't play defense this way, Maddie is going to score everytime she touches it."
Lewis's best scoring support came from Emily Harkleroad with 11 points. Lindsey Sims was SBA's rebounding leader with 13.
Contact Kelley Smiddie at ksmiddie@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6653. Follow him at twitter.com/KelleySmiddie.