Sports
Jiles’s heroics send W-N to regionals
Matthew Semisch
02/17/2015
VELVA - Jordan Cooper had a peculiar look on his face early Saturday evening. A somewhat mischievous one, almost as if he’d just stolen something.
He hadn’t, but his Westhope-Newburg (W-N) girls’ basketball team had.
The Sioux came into last week’s Class B District 11 tournament on the back foot. After finishing just 2-4 in district play in regular season, W-N won two of three games at the district tournament to advance to next week’s Region 6 finals in Minot.
“We stuck it out and found a way,” Cooper said. “We’d been on a roll here these last five or six games and did face some adversity but we found a way.
“We had some defensive breakdowns tonight, and if we play good we play really well, but if our defense gets stagnant and we can’t score and don’t fight, that’s not our basketball game, but we just found a way to make sure we’d keep playing behind this weekend.”
W-N went to Velva last week as the No. 6 team in the district’s seven-team tournament.
Once there, though, the Sioux punched above their weight. W-N knocked off No. 3 Sawyer 72-66 in Thursday’s opening round.
That win over the Flashes pushed W-N into a district semifinal game against the second-seeded hosts from Velva. The Sioux again put up a solid showing in an automatic qualifier for next week’s regional finals, but the Aggies prevailed by a 56-48 count.
Velva thereby advanced to Saturday night’s District 11 title game. It was there that the Aggies fell 52-40 to top-seeded Rugby.
Both Velva and Rugby had already assured themselves of places at the Region 6 showcase. That afternoon, though, W-N and Towner-Granville-Upham (T-G-U) were locked in a win-or-go-home battle.
The Sioux were the better team in the region-qualifier game’s first half. W-N jumped out to a 19-12 lead through the first eight minutes of the game and led 35-26 at halftime.
When the game restarted, T-G-U gave itself a lifeline. The Titans only scored 10 points in the third quarter, but they held W-N to just three points - a trey from Amber Hall, who finished the game with 17 points - in the first 7:27 of that frame.
Still down 43-36 heading into the fourth quarter, T-G-U kept pushing. The Titans gave the Sioux through most of the second half, and T-G-U eventually tied the game in the final minute at 54-54.
Sioux eighth-grader Abbie Jiles had two shots at the free throw line with 16.9 seconds left in regulation to put W-N back ahead. The transfer from Arkansas missed both freebies, but the Sioux soon got the ball back with 7.1 seconds left and the score still tied.
After taking a pass into play from the baseline under the T-G-U hoop, Jiles made herself a hero. Wheeling around from the outside into the paint, Jiles cut the Titans’ defense open and hit a game-winner with 1.5 seconds left.
“I knew that we had to score and just knew I had to step up and help us out,” Jiles said of where her mind was at on the play. “I saw an opening in the lane and went for it and the shot went in”
W-N (12-10) will have its work cut out for it again in the first round of the Region 6 tournament. The Sioux will face Class B No. 1 Minot Bishop Ryan at 3 p.m. on Monday at the Minot Auditorium.