Girls' Basketball: Reno ends Douglas High's season

Coming in to its first-round playoff game Tuesday night, the Douglas girls' basketball team knew it was going to need more than a few lucky breaks to have any shot of knocking off the defending regional champion and top-ranked Reno Huskies.

Among the largest of those breaks would've been for the Huskies to have an off shooting night.

Unfortunately for the Tigers, things went pretty much the opposite direction.

Reno hit 10 3-pointers in the game and used a 31-point second quarter to run away with a 76-43 win over Douglas in Reno to advance to the regional quarterfinals.

"They've done that to people all year," Douglas coach Werner Christen said of the Huskies. "We wanted to keep the game in the 50s and to do that we knew we would have to slow down their offense. I figured we could score in the 40s or the 50s with them, but to have a chance, we wanted to keep it close going down to the end."

Through the first quarter, it was a strategy that worked pretty well.

Douglas' zone defense kept the Huskies at bay, holding them scoreless for a pair of two-minute stretches in the first.

Jessica Waggoner scored eight of Douglas' 10 points in the quarter to help Douglas keep the score close, trailing 12-10 with a minute left.

Reno's Shannon Gough hit a 3-pointer with nine seconds left in the quarter, however, exposing the Tigers on the perimeter and opening the floodgates heading into the second quarter.

Gough and Erica Hansen hit 3-pointers on consecutive trips down the floor in the first minute of the second quarter, launching the Huskies on what would end up being a 29-6 run. During that stretch, Reno his six 3-pointers.

Once the buzzer sounded for halftime, the Huskies had outscored the Tigers 31-13 in the quarter and taken a commanding 46-23 lead.

"I've been coaching here for 23 years and I've never seen a quarter like that before," Christen said. "As a team, Reno just shot really, really well. At one point, they made six or seven shots in a row, all on the perimeter. I've never seen a team shoot like that.

"We tried to slow things down with our zone a little bit, but got on a roll with that. By halftime, we were just saying let's try to cut it to 10."

Reno had other plans.

The Huskies opened the third quarter with a 14-0 run, during which Sarah Finlay scored nine points. It was four minutes into the quarter before Douglas managed to get back on the scoreboard with a pair of free throws from Waggoner.

"They made their shots," Christen said. "They didn't do anything we didn't expect them to do except in all of the film I watched on them, they didn't shoot like that.

"They do a good job of penetrating and they do a good job of keeping people on the wings and on the baseline ready to catch and shoot. Tonight was a perfect example of that."

Nearly lost in all of the offensive fireworks on the Huskies' end of the floor was a career night from Waggoner, who finished her career with the Tigers after starting for the past four seasons.

Waggoner finished with 25 points, despite being double- and triple-teamed for the majority of the game.

"They did a good job defensively on her," Christen said. "They had a great game plan against her and they did a good job of rotating over on the weak side to take away her path to the basket. She is a heck of a player and she did a good job against a good game plan. They made her take some shots that she's not real comfortable taking."

Stephanie Rovetti led Reno with 16 points while Finlay and Gough each finished with 11. All 10 of Reno's players put points on the board.

Senior Dany Heidt finished her career with a seven-point game for the Tigers, junior Ne'Jae Jackson had five points, senior Ally Freitas had four points and Bri Burnside had one.