Sterling’s Delali Amankwa hits game winner against Quincy

STERLING — Delali Amankwa scored the game-winning basket at the final buzzer Saturday afternoon to send Sterling past Quincy 42-40 in a hard-fought Western Big 6 game at Musgrove Fieldhouse.

Amankwa rebounded a miss by teammate Nia Harris and put up the final shot from the left baseline as time expired to keep the Golden Warriors (23-5, 10-1 WB6) in first place in the conference standings by themselves.

“Just get a shot off, that was my main priority. I just wanted to get it up, because it was either going to win it or we were going to overtime,” Amankwa said. “Honestly, the refs had told us that we were on the sideline, so we had to call something out once we got out on the court and found out it was a baseline out-of-bounds. The coaches told us that they trusted us to go out and win games ourselves, and that’s exactly what that was. We just called out a play and went and did it; it wasn’t even what we drew up, because we thought it was on the sideline and not the baseline.”

After trailing 29-20 early in the third quarter, the Warriors used a 15-2 run to take a 35-31 lead into the fourth quarter. They stretched it to as much as 38-33 on a Jossy James jumper midway through the fourth quarter.

“I think we realized that we were all capable of taking it at them on offense and defense, and all of our guards and our post attacked the rim a lot harder,” Amankwa said of the comeback. “That opened up a lot of shots for us.”

Quincy’s Madelyn Hamby

– who gave the Blue Devils the nine-point lead with three straight 3-pointers around halftime – nailed her fifth 3 of the game to tie the score 40-40 with 36 seconds to play. Sterling ran about 30 seconds off the clock before calling timeout with 4.3 seconds remaining to set up the final play.

James had 18 points, eight rebounds, four steals, two assists and two blocked shots, and Madison Austin added 13 points and seven rebounds for Sterling. Amankwa had seven point and five rebounds, and Harris grabbed eight boards.

Hamby led the Blue Devils with 15 points. Jada Brown scored 11 points, Khloe Nicholson added nine, and Myley Longcor chipped in five.