BREESE • Mater Dei junior Paige Richards only scored two points Saturday afternoon, but those points were crucial.
Richards, a 5-foot-7 guard, hit a wide open 15-footer as the buzzer sounded to give the host Knights a 31-30 comeback victory over Nashville in a nonconference game.
"I was in the right place at the right time," said Richards. "I was kind of surprised I was open. It wasn't hard to score because I was wide open."
At first, it didn't look like Richards would get her opportunity to be the hero.
Mater Dei (22-2, No. 2 in the STLhighschoolsports.com small-schools rankings and No. 7 in the Illinois Associated Press Class 3A state poll)trailed 30-24 with 3 minutes 16 seconds left after a Shawn Rennegarbe basket.
But the Knights didn't quit. DePaul signee Brooke Schulte made two free throws and trimmed the deficit to 30-26 with 2:55 left. After Hornettes freshman Jordi Harre missed two foul shots, Mallory Mensing nailed a 3-pointer to make it 30-29 with 55.8 seconds remaining.
Erica Brown and Keisha Setzekorn then missed the front end of one-and-one free throw attempts for Nashville (23-3, No. 1 in the small-schools rankings and No. 3 in the AP Class 2A state poll). The Hornettes went to the line just four times -- all in the fourth quarter -- and they missed every attempt.
That set the stage for Richards, who had a baseline shot cleanly blocked by Shaye Harre with four seconds to go. Harre grabbed the ball and attempted to throw it off Richards' foot.
One official ruled the ball did go off Richards, but another official overruled, saying the ball went off Harre's foot, giving the ball to Mater Dei with 2.1 seconds remaining.
With three Nashville players surrounding Schulte, Richards took the wide-open inbounds pass and swished her shot as the horn sounded.
"I thought we could come back," Richards said. "Our team is not going to lay down and give up. We're going to keep going at it until the game is over. We were lucky enough (to get the ball) because it went off her foot. That was a tough call to make."
"Both teams played very hard and both teams played very physical," Knights coach Dave Kohnen said. "The tone of the game was to play physical. There were bodies laying all over the floor. I thought the kids did a good job hanging in there. They could have just given up. But they didn't do it."
"Sometimes the ball just doesn't go your way," Nashville coach Wayne Harre said. "That's just part of basketball....We missed a couple of checkoffs. Threw the ball away at the end. We played awful hard. Two good teams just battled each other."
Mater Dei's Schulte ended with a game-high 13 points and a team-best eight rebounds, while Brown led Nashville with a team-best 10 points and five rebounds.
