4A high school girls basketball: Red Devils blast past Roy in quarters

TAYLORSVILLE — The Springville Red Devils are on a mission. Each day they get a little closer to reaching their goal of winning a state title. And they played with a mission-like purpose in their 61-41 victory over the Roy Royals in the 4A state girls basketball tournament quarterfinals.

But that victory isn't all this team wants to accomplish. It's time to move on to the next one. "It feels really good to get back into the semis because this is what we've been working toward all year," said Springville's Sadie Clements, who scored 11 points for the Red Devils against Roy in the quarterfinal matchup on 5-11 shooting and with one trey.

But now the team finds itself on the brink of walking into a brick wall against the Sky View Bobcats, last year's champs and this year's No. 1 team with a 23-0 record.

"We're going to use our speed to our advantage and stick to what's working (when we take on Sky View)," said Springville coach Nancy Warner, who doesn't want her players to come out intimidated by the defending champs.

If they can play the entire game the way they came out against Roy, the Red Devils have a shot to pull off the upset, but they have to keep up the defensive intensity and let their offense feed off of it.

That's exactly what they did in the first three quarters against Roy.

"We had played them in the preseason, but this was a whole different team. We had to put that game out of our minds, because this was a whole new feeling and a whole new atmosphere," said Warner, who noted she was pleased her team put forth such a good defensive effort and pounded the boards, winning the rebounding battle 44-27 with a 17-7 advantage on the offensive glass.

The start was critical as Springville finished the first quarter by scoring seven straight and added another three onto that with Lexie Eaton's second three-point play in the paint.

"If we can start that way with defensive intensity and we can push the ball and get easy baskets that lifts us," said Warner, and her team kept up the intensity through the first three quarters, leading 49-26 at the end of three.

"We just made it our goal to come out hard on defense and get our offense going. (During the game) we kind of had a letdown of defensive intensity, and we needed to pick it up and we did," Clements said.

In addition to Clements' 11 points, Eaton had 12 points and nine boards for the Red Devils, Jessica Jensen added nine points and three blocked shots, and Ashley Kroneberger finished with a truly balanced effort and 14 points, 11 rebounds, three assists and three blocks.

Alisa Woodard had a solid game for the Royals with 15 points, seven rebounds, three assists and three steals in the loss. Krystin Jachim led the team with 22 points.

E-mail: jolsen@desnews.com