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TAYLORSVILLE — Every player on the Highland High girls basketball team has a nickname.
For senior Taryn Johnson, it’s “the shark” — hiding in the depths of the ocean and waiting to pounce when she smells blood.
“I just hide away and attack when teams are most vulnerable,” Johnson explained. “Whenever I need to, I hit those threes to keep us in the game and keep us pumped up.”
For most of the first half of Wednesday’s Class 5A quarterfinal, Johnson lurked, hid and waited to strike. At the stroke of the halftime buzzer, she did.
And it was all the momentum the Rams needed.
Johnson scored 11 points, including a pair of 3-pointers to end the second and third quarters, and fellow senior Lana Olevao had a game-high 19 points and 17 rebounds to lift Highland to a 51-41 win over Woods Cross and into the semifinals of the state tournament at Salt Lake Community College.
“Throughout the season, we struggled a lot,” said Johnson, one of three key seniors on the team with Olevao and Misini Fifita. “But after the West game, it hit us; this is our last year together. We came together and realized it’s our last time. That’s when it all came together.”
Olivia Barton led Woods Cross (15-8) with 17 points, Paige McKenna added 11 points and four steals and teammate Allee McKenna pulled down 10 rebounds.
But the Wildcats couldn’t recover after being outscored 19-5 in the third quarter.
“It wasn’t going right at first,” Olevao said. “But Highland hasn’t been here in, like, 20 years, so our motivation was insane.
“We were all kind of irritated with the first half. But we came together in the third quarter, and finally played as a team and got in a groove.”
Buzzer beater! Woods Cross leads 20-19 at halftime after trailing 12-5 in the 1st quarter pic.twitter.com/0ZQAwMneGR
— Patrick Carr (@patrickcarr_) February 21, 2018
Both teams started out sloppy, but Highland coach Kurt Schneider used an early timeout as his team was going to the free-throw line to settle the squad.
Whatever he said, it worked.
“We played their game in the first 4-5 minutes and got in a rut. We did what Woods Cross likes to do, and got out of what we do,” said Schneider, whose team upset Region 7 champ Corner Canyon in the first round. “At halftime, we made some adjustments and slowed things down a bit.
“To be honest, Lana was the biggest factor; she struggled a bit, but then she refocused and took over the game.”
The Rams scored six-straight out of the timeout during a 9-2 run, and Olivia Beckstead’s 3-pointer in the final minute gave the Rams a 12-6 lead after the first quarter.
But the lead wouldn’t last long.
The Wildcats opened the second quarter on an 8-1 run, and took their first lead of the game when Paige McKenna buried a 3-pointer from the left corner to go up 14-13 with 4:10 remaining in the half. Woods Cross took a four-point lead into the final seconds of the half, but Taryn Johnson drained her first 3-pointer of the game to pull the Rams within one, 20-19 at the break.
That was all the momentum Highland needed.
Johnson struck for two in the first 30 seconds of the half, and the Rams used an 11-3 run to start the third quarter to seize control.
Woods Cross made just one field goal in the third quarter, a quick three from Sara Noel a minute into the quarter, to fall behind 38-25 at the start of the fourth.
“You can’t explain that,” Schneider said of Johnson’s clutch shooting. “When she was a junior, she would always do that; she’d come off the bench and hit some timely threes. That’s what I’ve expected this year, and it hasn’t worked out — until the last 5-6 games. She just hides in the corner, and the next thing you know, she hits that three.
“She’s a good pure shooter.”
The Wildcats tried to make a run in the fourth quarter, when Barton scored 10 points. But the damage was already done and Highland — the No. 4 seed from Region 6 — advanced to the state semifinals for the first time since 1984, according to the coaching staff.
