Titan girls finish regular season with a win

District tournament this week

[  by Than Acuff  ]

Following a tough outing against Custer County on Friday, February 18, the Crested Butte Titans girls basketball team closed out regular season play with a big win over the South Park Burros on Saturday, February 19 and are now headed into the district tournament.

It was a tough venue for the Titans as the Custer County Bobcats packed the gym for their senior night and the Bobcats opened the game feeding off the hometown energy to build a 12-7 lead. They carried that energy up until halftime as the Bobcats finished the first half up 25-12.

Coach Amanda Reynolds spoke briefly with her team during halftime to discuss what needed to be done and then left it up to the team to come together on their own in the locker room and figure it out.

“I left them to figure out how to fix it themselves and I think they really did,” says Reynolds.

A revived Titans team hit the floor for the second half to outscore the Bobcats over the next two quarters but the gap was too big to eliminate as Crested Butte fell 46-35. Blakeley Reynolds led the team with 21 points while Mara Pennie knocked down four points.

“Mara is starting to shift her focus into being more of an offensive threat,” says Amanda. “We just didn’t quite pull it together as a team until the second half. But getting through that helped set the stage for success against South Park.”

The Titans took that second half against Custer County and opened the game against South Park the next day on the same pace as Blakeley kicked it off with a three-pointer and Leigh Harpel followed with four points to lead Crested Butte to a quick 7-1 lead.

The Burros regrouped following a timeout to climb back into the game with a 7-2 run to close the first quarter and pull within one of the Titans.

Blakeley remained hot from the perimeter and Ellie Duryea provided additional points inside while Lexi Pickering repeatedly pulled down rebounds but South Park had a response every step of the way. The game then took a weird turn as South Park lost one of its five available players to injury and were forced to play with four on the floor. 

“You could tell that our girls were concerned about their injured player so we had a bit of a lull,” says Amanda.

Up just three points to open the second half, Crested Butte ramped up their effort, especially once South park was back to full strength. Pennie drained a six foot jumper, Blakeley hit another three-pointer and Duryea rattled off six points in a row to carry the Titans to a 37-26 lead heading into the fourth quarter.

The game remained the same through the fourth quarter as Crested Butte sealed the 48-40 win with Blakeley leading all scorers with 28 points and Duryea dropping in nine.

“I think we allowed South Park to score too many points but we’re starting to see growth across all of our players,” says Amanda.

The Titans open the district tournament against Trinidad and if they win that, they head to face Sanford the following day.