Girls' basketball: Odd victory puts Pine Creek in second round

Brandi Farley and Audra Romero were spectacular in the second half. That they needed to be in order to push Pine Creek to its first win in a state tournament game was downright bizarre.

Farley and Romero each had 10-point quarters in the second half Wednesday as the Eagles fended off Brighton 63-51 in the first round of the Class 5A tournament despite a 25-of-30 performance from the free-throw line for the Bulldogs.

“It was so frustrating, we kept on getting our fouls and they kept on making them,” Farley said. “It started to (tick) us off a little bit.”

Take away those free throws and the game would have been embarrassingly lopsided. Sixth-seeded Pine Creek (15-9) limited No. 11 seed Brighton (11-13) to one field goal over the first 131/2 minutes as its defense led to a number of easy points and a prolonged 25-9 run.

“A lot of our shots just didn’t fall,” said Brighton’s Jordanne Kniss, who went 15-of-17 from the line on the way to a game-high 25 points. “Especially in the first half when we were 4-for-23 or something from the floor.”

The shooting wasn’t all that better in the second half — Brighton finished with 12 field goals — but the Bulldogs were within eight points late in the third quarter thanks to all those foul shots.

“At one point, I turned to my assistants and said, ‘That must be all they do in practice,’” Pine Creek coach Kelley Stewart said.

That’s where Romero stepped in. The sophomore, who led Pine Creek with 18 points, made consecutive 3-pointers that stretched the lead back to 14.

Finally, Farley beat Brighton at its own game in nailing all eight of her fourth-quarter free throws to seal it.

“I felt like someone needed to pick up the team,” said Farley, the team’s leading scorer this season who scored 12 of her 15 in the second half. “Someone needed to be the spark. I was trying to do it.”

Stewart, in her eighth season at Pine Creek, never had taken a team out of the first round. The one that finally did it is loaded with juniors — Aurielle Sutton is the only senior — which obviously speaks highly of the future.

But Romero didn’t want to think about that just yet. She was focused on playing at No. 3 seed Heritage (17-6) on Saturday.