(Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)
PUEBLO — Big players make big plays. That’s what Canon City girls basketball coach Dan Heath said after Friday night’s game, but he would’ve preferred it if he was talking about one of his own players.
He was complimenting the play of Pueblo East’s Kayla Albo who seemingly couldn’t miss. And because of that, the Eagles came away with a 56-43 win to advance to the Sweet 16 of the Class 4A girls basketball tournament.
“She hit two threes in a row when it was a tie game,” Heath said. “We couldn’t recover from that.”
But it wasn’t just one point in the game where she knocked down a couple of shots. Albo was the catalyst for the 10th-seeded Eagles (17-7 overall) from the start. She scored the first 12 points for the Eagles, with all of them coming from behind the arc.
But the No. 42 Tigers (11-14) weren’t going to be that easy to beat. They tried to pressure East offensively and their efforts were rewarded with foul calls. Salik Winston and Chazz Padula were each hit with two fouls in the first quarter, forcing East to adjust their usual approach to the game.
“We preach that in the playoffs, they’re going to get called,” Eagles coach Angie Gorham said. “Those reaches that don’t get called are going to get called. The Pueblo refs let us play and in the playoffs, they call those.”
But it helped to have Albo knocking down everything in sight. She finished with a game-high 26 points, 12 better than her season average.
“They came out in a 2-3 and we weren’t getting very many open looks,” Albo said. “I just felt like I had to score a couple of points really fast to get us the lead and kick up our momentum.”
The teams traded lead changes throughout the first half, but the Eagles were able to go on a 9-0 run in the second to finally seize some of that momentum that Albo referenced. They went into halftime with a two-point lead, but it still wasn’t going to be easy to put the Tigers away.
(Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)
Canon City got a lift from Katie Till and Jerika Moore to fight back from a six-point deficit. It was a basket by Moore that evened the score at 35.
But as long as Albo was able to shoot, East had the advantage. She knocked down two 3-pointers to put the Eagles up by six.
The Tigers got one of those triples back, but Albo immediately countered and East never looked back.
“I felt like I did my part and everyone else did their part,” Albo said. “(We) boxed out well, pushed the ball up the court well and overall as a team, we played really well today.”
But there are still things that can be worked on. The Eagles shot 50 percent from the free throw line, and were right around that percentage late in the fourth quarter. Gorham knows that if her team is going to keep advancing, they have to be better.
“That’s been a constant battle against Pueblo West, against South, against the better teams in our league,” she said. “It’s still a battle we’re fighting.”
But they live to fight another day. They advance to Tuesday’s Sweet 16, keeping their state title chances alive and well.