HAMLET – The Class 1A No. 9 Triton girls basketball team is prepping to face a familiar foe. Defeating Culver 48-44 Friday night at Oregon-Davis High School, the Lady Trojans punched their ticket into tonight’s Sectional 51 championship game against No. 2 Oregon-Davis, which defeated Argos 75-42 in the second semifinal Friday. The matchup will be the seventh-straight time Triton and O-D have met in the sectional, the fourth time in the championship game. The 7 p.m. game will also be the third time the two have met this year, as O-D won 65-55 in Bourbon on Jan. 2 then dismantled Triton 80-36 in the championship game of the TCU Bi-County Tournament at LaVille on Jan. 19. But before worrying about the defending sectional champions, Triton first had to deal with Northern State Conference foe Culver, which the Lady Trojans downed 52-37 on Jan. 11 in Bourbon. However, the second meeting between the two was much closer. Following a three-point bucket by junior Taylor Hatfield 18 seconds into the second quarter, Triton didn’t score again until she hit a layup with four seconds remaining. In-between the Hatfield baskets, Culver used a 10-0 run to take a 21-16 lead into the half. With her team behind 22-16 early in the second half, Triton sophomore Kylie Mason then hit two treys, tying the game at 22-22. Senior Shana Anderson gave the Lady Trojans their first lead since the opening quarter with a bucket midway through the third quarter. Culve tied the game at 26-26, but another Mason basket gave Triton a lead it didn’t relinquish. “We settled down in the second half,” Triton coach Adam Heckaman said. “We let our defense force turnovers, then we used that to get some easy buckets. We got the lead, which made them rush a little more and made our defense a little bit better. That was something we needed tonight, because the shots weren’t falling, but we got the shots we needed from our defense.” Though making just 14 of 42 field goal attempts, Triton did force 25 turnovers, but committed 19. Perhaps the biggest moment of the game came in the fourth quarter, when Hatfield, who’d been frustrated earlier in the game, converted a layup and followed that with a three-pointer, increasing Triton’s lead to 36-29 with 5:24 remaining. “It wasn’t her best game, she’ll admit that, but she’s a competitor,” Heckaman said of the 5-foot-4 point guard. “Her and I had some words on the bench, and she knew where I stood and I knew where she stood. The bottom line is, she’s a competitor and that’s what we need out there. I knew if we had her out there, she was going to step up and make the big plays and she did.” Hatfield finished the game with 16 points and went 4 of 4 at the free throw line down the stretch, and she wasn’t alone. While Culver was trying to make a surge, Triton converted 10 of 12 free throws in the final five minutes, as Anderson was 6 of 6 during that time, finishing the game with 18 points. “I was proud of the fact that outside of one bad decision on a shot, we really did make good decisions when we got the lead,” Heckaman said. “We took care of the ball, we made them play longer possessions on defense. We didn’t rush. We didn’t allow them to get the ball back and go down and score quickly. We killed clock.” Anderson and Hatfield each finished with five rebounds, as did sophomore Krystal Sellers, who also had a team-high six assists.
