The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

DAYTON - Tuesday night's 38-31 victory over Walla Walla Valley Acad­emy wasn't quite as sweet for the Lady Bulldogs as the 45-40 cliff-hanger win over DeSales on Saturday, but the seniors were pleased they pulled it out of the hat on their home court during Senior Night.

"It was awesome to get a win," senior Malia Frame said. "It was a bit messy, but we were able to pull it off."

With only one regular- season game left against Tri Cities Prep on Saturday, the Lady Dogs are virtually guaranteed second place in the league and still have a shot at ending first depend­ing on the outcome of sev­eral other games.

The Lady Bulldogs are 14-5 overall and 7-2 in league. They beat the WWVA Knights earlier in the season and were some­what surprised at the tall­er team's resistance. Not known for its long-distance shooting, 25 of the Knights' 31 points came from treys or free throws.

Dayton head coach Clay­ton Strong said his girls didn't play "as crisp and fluid as we have been. But when it comes to wins, you take them however you can get them."

Going into the game, the Dogs' strategy centered on a strong defense against the Knights' two veteran guards, Emily Field and Amy Arn­zen, who typically rack up an average of 30 points per game between them, Strong said.

The approach worked, but left the dogs vulner­able to 5'9" senior Megan Gregg's three-point shot attempts and she did well, scoring four treys and a team high of 14 points. By contrast, Field and Arnzen managed only six and two points respectively.

"We manned them up," Strong said, referring to his team's success at shutting the guards down. But he acknowledged the girls gave Gregg too much room to aim for the bucket from afar. "You give her some room and she will shoot," Strong said.

For the first three quar­ters, the game was a seesaw affair with the Knights up 11-10 at the end of the first quarter and again marginally ahead at the end of the third. The seniors were dominant and scrappy from the get go, setting the pace for the rest of the team in jamming WWVA's offense.

"The seniors did well when we needed them," Strong said.

Gregg opened the sec­ond quarter with a breath- catching trey, but the Lady Dogs didn't get rattled. They quickly dominated both keys and, despite another trey before the buzzer, pushed ahead 20-18 by half time.

With three-pointers as the only weapon that kept the Knights in the game against the onslaught of layups and rebounds from seniors Frame, McKayla Bickelhaupt and Jessica Tate, WWVA finished the third quarter slightly ahead 31-30.

But in the last period, Dayton gained the upper hand, denying their op­ponents any more points. Frame's first layup of the quarter put her team ahead 32-31. Sarah Phillips broke through with several steals that yielded no buckets and the teams wrestled for con­trol of center court until Lexie Ramirez broke the im­passe with a bucket to spike the scoreboard 34-31.

Fouling the Dayton of­fense seemed the only de­fense the Knights had left in the fourth quarter's last half, sending Frame to the free-throw line to convert two more points and go up 36-31. Tate sealed the mar­gin with a layup to make it 38-31 with 2:30 remaining.

From that point, the Lady Bulldogs maintained control of the ball for the most part and ran down the clock ef­fectively, not letting the team from Walla Walla back in the game.

"It was closer than I ex- pected," Tate said. "It was a bit scary, actually. But we persevered and came out winning in the end."

The entire team was still reveling in Saturday's vic- tory over the Irish, who had not been beaten by a Dayton crew in five years, Strong said.

"It was sweet," he said about a win that almost got away when DeSales cut a 10-point Dayton lead to 4 with two minutes to go in the last period. But Frame's offensive rebound on a free throw "iced the game for us," Strong said. "We had our hands in their face most of the night."