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TAYLORSVILLE — No need to panic.
That’s what Fremont guard Karlie Valdez—known as "Baby Karlie" to her coaches for her diminutive stature—said to her teammates when Riverton’s Kaitlin Burgess tied up their Class 6A quarterfinal with nine seconds remaining at Salt Lake Community College.
Nine seconds, she contended, is an eternity.
Boy, is it.
Valdez’s game-winning drive to the bucket in the final nine seconds of the game was all Fremont needed, and the Silver Wolves rallied by the Silverwolves 48-46 Thursday to advance to Friday’s Class 6A state semifinals.
“I just tried attacking it, and they left the basket open,” Valdez said. “Our coach told us that nine seconds is an eternity; you have so much time with nine seconds—it’s way longer than it seems.”
Valdez finished with 10 points, five rebounds, four assists and two steals for Fremont (21-2), and teammate Mazzie Melaney added 10 points, including a perfect 8-of-8 shooting from the free-throw line.
“Valdez played great from the get-go,” Fremont coach Lisa Dalebout said. “We were playing really timid, and when she went in, people played more emboldened.
“Nine seconds is a really long time; you can run it down and back in nine seconds, and we do that plenty of times. We knew they had plenty of time, and we were going to try to get something to the basket.”
Riverton (18-6) had all the advantage early, thanks to the post presence of Morgan Kane. The 6-foot-2 senior center tallied a game-high 22 points, 14 rebounds, three assists, three steals and two blocked shots.
Riverton led by 15-4 with 2:05 left in the first quarter when Kane hit back-to-back shots in the post.
But when the Silverwolves' behemoth exited the floor with foul trouble—once in the first half and again with three fouls at the end of the third quarter—the Silver Wolves made their move.
Valdez hit her first of two 3-pointers as Fremont finished the first half on a 9-0 run to pull within 30-23 at halftime and kept the momentum through an up-and-down third quarter.
“The whole day is exhausting; when you play the last game of the day, it wears you out,” Dalebout said. “We came out flat, really timid, and let them do whatever they wanted. I think we responded a little bit better, but it was a very emotional game.”
Berkley Larsen’s stepback jumper pulled the Silver Wolves within five, 35-30 with 3:46 left in the third period.
Still, Kane kept Fremont from taking the lead back—until the senior center went to the bench late in the third quarter with her third foul, when the Silver Wolves began to make their final run.
“She is a really special player and does some good stuff at the basket,” Dalebout said of Kane. “She made it hard on us. If you sink down and help, they kick it out to their shooters, and they were really difficult to figure out. Luckily, our zone figured it out.”
Emma Calvert pulled Fremont within one with 5:52 left in the game, and one minute later, and Melaney extended the lead to 44-41 with a drive two minutes later that capped an 11-0 run by the Silver Wolves.
“Our coach always tell us to play to the buzzer and keep fighting,” Melaney said. “I just think all of the younger girls were panicking, but we just told them it would be OK.
“Never give up is the mindset we’ve always had. There are a lot of younger girls here, but they are really good.”
Kane refused to let the Silverwolves go away, and—with the clock winding down quickly—Kaitlin Burgess pumped in her third 3-pointer of the game to force a 46-46 tie.
The only problem?
She left too much time on the clock, setting up Valdez’s late heroics.
“But this team has a way of figuring things out. We’ve been down big before this season, and we just chip away and don’t really panic.”
“You go to the minute where you think you are done, but you just keep fighting through it,” Valdez said. “We got down, but we knew we had to keep fighting through it to come back. You can come back from anything.”
Fremont will face Westlake (17-7) in a 6A state semifinal Friday at 5:50 p.m. MST.
