By Denise Tucker
Willard High School girls’ basketball coach J.J. Adamson watched his Lady Tigers’ 12-point, third-quarter lead shrivel to one before calling a timeout with 47.8 seconds to go to try and settle his team down in Monday night’s game against Bolivar.
“I just tried to make them laugh a little bit, smile a little bit myself, and said if we truly do want to win this basketball game, we might want to start playing a little bit better than we have the last couple of minutes,” Adamson said.
Bolivar had fouls to give and gave up four of those trying to stop the clock and gain possession.
Willard’s Brooklyn Wade hit both ends of a 1-and-1 to put the Lady Tigers up 57-54 with 31.4 seconds left. Bolivar’s Michelle Gabani picked up her third steal of the game and scored on a layup to pull the Lady Liberators within 57-56.
But two more free throws, this time from Josie Sanders, and a key block by Joran Stout-Mitchell on a Bolivar 3-point attempt, gave Willard the 59-56 nonconference victory to improve to 5-2 on the season.
“That’s a credit to Willard,” Bolivar coach Darin Archer said. “They executed down at the end, they hit their shots and hit their free throws. That’s the mark of a pretty good team. Coach Adamson has done a great job with this group and they’re much improved.”
Willard jumped into a full-court press with a little over two minutes left in the first quarter to spark a 7-2 run to take a 14-9 lead.
“We kind of use our defense to spur on our offense,” Adamson said. “We try to increase the tempo and try to play at a pace that fits our personnel. We’re not running any 6-1 or 6-2 girls out there, so we’ve got to try and use what little bit of advantage with our team speed that we have.”
The early deficit, compounded by Willard’s full-court press, was almost too much for Bolivar (3-4) to try and recover from.
“We dug ourselves too much of a hole way too early, but at the same time you’ve got to give Willard some credit because of that,” Archer said. “They got out and guarded and we didn’t handle their pressure very well.
“But, at the same time, I was proud of the way our girls came back and tried to make it a ballgame.”
And Gabani provided nearly all of the offense the Lady Liberators would need by scoring 14 of her game-high 21 points in the fourth quarter in trying to help Bolivar pull out the win.
“She’s learning,” Archer said of his star junior, and a team that lost 71 percent of its scoring from last year. “We’re putting a lot of pressure on her to go out and do that, and she’s learning how to do that. We’ve seen moments like you saw there at the end where she’ll take a game over. She’s an awfully special player.”
But another big contributor Monday night was senior center Megan Spear, who added 15 points for Bolivar.
“Megan did a great job tonight, I thought, especially in the second half,” Archer said. “Her energy kind of spilled out to everybody else, and I’m awfully proud of her. She’s worked hard to help us out this year and she’s going to continue to get better.”
Willard, which has already bettered its 2015-16 record of 4-19 by improving to 5-2, still has some work to do, according to Adamson.
“An ugly win is better than a loss, I guess,” Adamson said. “It showed us that we still have a lot of things that we can improve upon. Our program is in a situation right now where we’re still learning how to win.
“Even though the final margin wasn’t as large as it was at some points during the game, we still found a way to go ahead and finish it out. And I think that’s a sign of growth and maturity for our program.”
WILLARD GIRLS 59, BOLIVAR 56
WILLARD – 14-18-12-15—59
BOLIVAR –  9-14-10-23—56
WILLARD (5-2) – Joran Stout-Mitchell 12, Larissa Pyle 9, Nona Adamson 9, Hannah Bird 8, Josie Sanders 7, Brooklyn Wade 4, Kennedy Burch 5, Lizzie Drennan 5.
BOLIVAR (3-4) – Michelle Gabani 21, Megan Spear 15, Rhegan Hancock 11, Reaghan Lesh 6, Taylor Dial 3.
Willard B 56, Bolivar B 45
Willard freshmen 41, Bolivar freshmen 7
Up next: Bolivar at Rolla, 6 p.m. Tuesday; Pink and White Lady Classic – (Pink) Bolivar vs. #5 Republic, 12:30 p.m., Dec. 27, Weiser Gym; (White) Willard vs. #6 Lebanon, 7:30 p.m., Dec. 27, O’Reilly Family Event Center.
