Charleston – Pressure makes diamonds.
The pressure Wyoming East faced and applied will account for every diamond that will goes in the program’s fourth state championship ring.
Facing what seemed like an insurmountable 11-point deficit with under five minutes to go, the Lady Warriors never folded in Saturday’s Class AA championship win against Williamstown, taking on the personality of their first-year head coach, Ryan Davidson. In fact it was a blend of old and new.
Angie Boninsegna, who led the ship during the program’s 2016, ’21 and ’23 title runs, repeatedly uttered her motto “Keep the Faith” throughout her tenure.
Davidson made sure they did so in his own way.
When East trailed Charleston Catholic by seven points in the Class AA quarterfinals on Thursday, all-stater Maddie Clark came to the bench, worried and muttering ‘We’re going to lose.”
Davidson nipped that immediately.
He told Clark they weren’t going to lose and solved the problem by adjusting his defense to generate turnovers and put his players in the best position to win.
Saturday night there wasn’t that same panic. It would be unbecoming of champions. So in a state tournament game played in way like none other during East’s previous title runs, the Lady Warriors rallied. The Catholic game was a great teacher.
“I really wanted to win and it was my last game,” Clark smiled. “I knew that we could win that game and so I just tried to calm everybody down, get the offense going and get defensive stops and we just played harder.
“I knew that we can come back from a deficit especially against Catholic because they’re a tough team. And Williamstown a tough team also. So I knew we had the ability to come back.”
Not bad for a kid who thought her team would suffer the embarrassment of losing to a No. 8 seed in the first round. Hindsight is 20-20 but she walked the talk throughout the second half, gathering her teammates to keep them composed at breaks.
It was reminiscent of the 2021 title run when Clark was an important freshman learning under Davidson’s daughter, Skylar, the most impactful leader the program has produced. Skylar had a killer instinct and refused to let her team lose.
Abby Russell carried that baton as the team leader and Clark kept the tradition alive. But she wasn’t alone Saturday.
Cadee Blackburn had routinely underperformed in title games. Coming into Saturday’s game she had scored six total points in 48 minutes across two state championship games. The Lady Warriors were 1-1 in those contests but that wasn’t going to cut it this year.
She was trending in that same direction after 16 minutes Saturday. And then she ripped a 9-0 run in three minutes, helping turn the tide of the game. There wasn’t a more convincing way to shake those performances and it wasn’t easy. She had to adjust in a game where she wasn’t getting many foul calls and when she did she missed her first four free throw attempts.
She turned it on and never turned it off.
The rest of her teammates accepted the challenge as well. Abi Baker had five steals and hit the two biggest shots of the game – one to tie and one to take the lead.
It comes back to coach Davidson who demanded fight from his girls and that set them apart from previous teams. The previous teams that broke through and won the first championship were special but even they’ll admit they feel like they should’ve won more titles. They were more talented than this group and it’s not a secret.
But in that shadow, this group needed to set itself apart.
How do you do that?
Accomplish what your predecessors could not. To be fair this Class AA isn’t the same as the old Class AA with the creation of the fourth classification. But winning titles is hard nonetheless and there’s no discrediting what the group has accomplished. They wanted to create their own legacies and had to battle to do so. They had to be ruthless to win.
Just like Davidson is when he needs to be.
When Williamstown called its final timeout with 1:40 to play, the head coach knew the situation and he let the dogs loose. He beat the state’s winningest head coach, a well-respected leader and state champion himself, with his adjustments.
“I can tell you exactly what I said, ‘That was his last (timeout) and he can’t save them again so let’s go get them,'” Davidson said.
No prisoners.
When the captain’s message is consistent it garners a lot of faith.
When Williamstown’s Rylie Landis unfortunately suffered a leg injury that ended her night with 12 minutes to go, Davidson, who saw his daughter suffer a season-ending injury as a freshman, was sympathetic and sincere. East as a program has likely lost titles because of ACL injuries to stars like Russell, (Skylar) Davidson and Gabby Lupardus before them. But at the same time he had to balance those emotions and do what was in the best interest of his team.
It was an uncomfortable topic that was addressed respectfully and appropriately.
“I hate that,” Davidson said. “I’ve been through that. You hate to see any kid get hurt. And I was able to speak to her in the hallway. So obviously we’re gonna be praying for that young lady and she’s super talented. But this game is like that. When those things happen, you can either rally or you can let it affect you. And I thought for us, it was like, you know, bad things happen. But we say it all the time, ‘Bad things are gonna happen. What are you going to be when it happens?’ And so we kind of just said, ‘Hey, you know, we’re going to keep the girl in our prayers and but we have to go attack.’ That’s what we have to do. So we kind of went after them.”
It took a monumental amount of belief for East to pull that comeback off. After all, the Lady Warriors had only scored 31 points over the previous 28 minutes. Finding 11 points to tie the game, much less 15 to close it, seemed impossible.
But when you’re a veteran of the game’s biggest stage you know when to turn your bark into a bite and let the dogs loose.
Email: tylerjackson@lootpres.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94