Kaitlyn Davis shoots Marquette into St. Bede Regional final

PERU – With just over a minute left and the game tied, Marquette senior Keely Nelson drove toward the basket. A St. Bede defender slid over to try to cut her off, and Nelson kicked it to teammate Kaitlyn Davis on the wing.

The sophomore caught the pass and immediately buried a 3-pointer with 1:03 left to give the Crusaders their first lead of the fourth quarter.

“I just had it in my head I was going to make it,” said Davis, who has 998 career points. “Confidence is the biggest thing for me.

“I felt ecstatic [when it went in]. I was feeling like we came back and we had a chance to win it.”

Davis made sure they did. She rebounded a missed free throw and made a pair of free throws with 29.8 seconds left to help No. 3 Marquette to a 50-45 victory over the No. 5 Bruins in a Class 1A St. Bede Regional semifinal Tuesday.

“It feels great,” Davis said.

Marquette (21-10) advances to play No. 2 Amboy (24-7) in the regional championship at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. The Clippers advanced with a 51-33 victory over No. 10 Putnam County in Tuesday’s first semifinal.

Amboy beat the Crusaders 49-41 on Dec. 27.

“Amboy is good at what they do,” Marquette coach Eric Price said. “We had a decent lead, then in the fourth quarter they shot a ton of free throws and they ended up beating us.

“They’re a bigger team. They’re a matchup problem. We have to box out and then we have to try to push in transition and get up court. We have to play hard defense and rebound.”

The Bruins had a size advantage over Marquette on Thursday and used it to build leads of 17-10 after the first quarter and 25-19 at halftime.

The Crusaders erased the six-point deficit on their first three possessions of the third quarter, then took the lead at 26-25 on a free throw by Hunter Hopkins.

The game stayed within five points the rest of the way.

“I told them at halftime, all year long we’ve been down, and we’ve always fought back and made it a game,” Price said. “I told them we played terrible and we’re down six. We made that 7-0 run right off the bat in the third, and I thought that was the game. It changed everything. It changed the momentum.

“In these games, momentum is huge.”

Despite Marquette’s run, St. Bede took a 37-33 lead to the fourth quarter.

“I thought we started out very well,” St. Bede coach Tom Ptak said. “I loved the first three quarters. We played good basketball. We were going by our plan. Foul trouble hurt us a little bit. We let some things happen in the fourth quarter that we shouldn’t have.”

After playing man-to-man defense the first three quarters, the Bruins switched to zone in the fourth due to foul trouble. Davis took advantage by draining three 3s in the period.

Hopkins found Davis on a long cross-court pass that led to the game-tying 3 with 2:08 left before Davis drained what proved to be the game-winner the next time down the court.

Davis knocked down 6 of 12 3-pointers and scored 24 points, while Hopkins finished with 14.

Savannah Bray led the Bruins, who finish 20-13, with 24 points. Ashlyn Ehm contributed eight points.

“I’m very happy [with the season],” Ptak said. “I think 20 wins is something to be very proud of. I also feel we improved greatly over the season, and that’s always the coach’s goal.

“It was a good crew. I’ll miss them. We have three seniors who went to state last year. They tasted it, and they’re upset tonight, obviously, but it’s been a good year.”

Amboy 51, Putnam County 33: The Clippers scored the game’s first seven points but couldn’t break away from the Panthers in the first half.

Putnam County limited Amboy to just four second-chance opportunities in the first half, and the Clippers managed just two second-chance points. Amboy led 12-4 after the first quarter and 20-11 at halftime.

“I thought we didn’t handle the ball quite as well as we normally do at the beginning,” Amboy coach Mike McCracken said. “Our big girl got in foul trouble, and that makes us small. But we stepped up and played better defense in the post, and then we started boxing out a little. Nobody’s hit the boards that hard against us.”

While the Panthers played solid defense and rebounded early, they struggled offensively, but senior Eme Bouxsein kept them in it. She scored Putnam County’s first nine points with her 3-pointer pulling PC within 12-9 with 6:01 left in the first half.

“I thought defensively in the first half we did a nice job of limiting their driving lanes and forcing them to take some outside shots,” PC coach Jared Sale said. “I thought it could’ve been a pretty tight game at the half, but we just couldn’t seem to get much going on the offensive end.”

The Clippers closed the first half on an 8-2 run then scored nine quick points – on 3s by Tyrah Vaessen and Bella Yanos and a three-point play by Addison Pertell – to start the third quarter to begin to pull away up 29-15. Amboy led 39-20 after three quarters and led comfortably throughout the fourth.

“That was huge,” McCracken said. “A big part of my halftime talk was building the lead, so to get nine points that fast kind of set the tone.”

Yanos led Amboy with 19 points, while Pertell and Jillian Anderson had nine each.

Bouxsein scored 18 points for PC (7-24), and Maggie Spratt added eight.