WHITEHALL — Through an 0-4 start to the season, Whitehall had not had a chance to see how its team would respond in a close game down the stretch. The Vikings got a look at such a spot Tuesday night against Fruitport, and the results were good.
Lianne Fagan drilled a three-pointer, her only points of the game, in the final minute to put Whitehall ahead for good in a 39-38 victory.
Fagan showed some of the resilience Whitehall needed to win the game in the fourth. She committed an unforced turnover earlier in the quarter and was subbed out, with coach Brian Milliron telling her she needed to have confidence in herself to match the confidence the coaches had in her.
Down one in the final minute, Fagan showed that confidence in knocking down an open trey.
“I just thought, in that moment, that I was open and I didn’t want to have another turnover, so I was like, ‘I’m going to take the shot, and the worst (thing) is, if I air-ball it, we’ll get a rebound,’” Fagan said. “But it turned out how I wanted it to.”
It was rarely easy for Whitehall, which had 16 turnovers and only 15 points in a tied game at halftime and trailed by seven going into the fourth quarter, but Milliron was impressed with his team’s ability to stay in the moment and continue to fight.
“The fact that we were able to turn that around in the second half was all triggered by our defense,” Milliron said. “We were able to cause some turnovers for them.”
The comeback began right away in the fourth, as Kendall Osborne scored and Lexi Daggett made a three to cut Whitehall’s deficit to two in the first minute. Osborne tied it up shortly thereafter with a bucket through a foul, and the two teams battled to a near standstill for the next few minutes leading up to Fagan’s pivotal shot.
The Trojans came into the game with a 3-0 record and brimming with confidence, adding to the impressiveness of Whitehall’s response.
“They came in and punched us in the mouth a little bit,” Milliron said. “For the first time all year, we kind of responded from a punch, which was a great thing to see.”
The Vikes had success early with the press, building a 10-3 lead, but Fruitport figured out a solution to the press to storm back and take a second-quarter lead. Daggett hit a tying three-pointer in the final seconds of the half to knot the score at 15.
Daggett and Osborne each scored 13 points to lead the Vikes; Osborne also had seven rebounds, four assists and four steals. Their leadership has been important to the team in the early going, but so too has that of the team’s three fourth-year members of the program: Taylor Ottinger, Allie Van Antwerp and Lucy Zamojcin, the latter of whom had a team-best eight rebounds Tuesday.
“Lexi transferred (in) a couple years ago, and Kendall transferred this year, so that integration piece is still there,” Milliron said. “These three seniors, they’ve done such a great job in the off-season, and since then, too, of just integrating the kids in. That’s going to come. It’s going to take time, but the gelling is there.”
In the meantime, Whitehall showed Tuesday it can win games with sheer nerve. Fagan said the team’s win could be credited to its desire.
“I think we just wanted it more,” Fagan said. “It just came down to that. We just really wanted it, especially in our home gym for the second home game of the year. The first one didn’t go the way we wanted to. We really wanted to turn that around and get the first home win.”
The Whitehall JV team scored a 31-23 win behind eight points by Maddi Wiggins.
