DAYTON - Lettie Lynch made her first big contribution to the Dayton High girls basketball team.
Lynch, who was recently brought up to the squad when D.J. Ply suffered a knee injury, scored all six of her points in the final quarter to spark Dayton to a 41-31 win over Fernley Friday night in a Northern 3A game.
The win upped Dayton's record to 3-0 entering today's pod game at 2A Lovelock at 2 p.m. The top two 3A teams in each pod advance to the 3A regional playoffs.
Dayton coach Cliff Serawop was pleased with the play of his sophomore guard.
"After the game against South Tahoe where D.J. got hurt, I talked to our JV coach (Ben Halverson) and we talked about who we should bring up, and we agreed on Lettie.
"At first, she was a little hesitant. She didn't play very much at Spring Creek and Elko. She's been working really hard in practice."
And, that obviously gave Serawop confidence in her.
Taylor Hill opened the fourth quarter with a 3-pointer to snap a 27-all tie. After Fernley turned the ball over on its next possession and then misfired on the possession after that. Lynch knocked down two free throws to give the Dust Devils a 32-27 lead with 7:05 left. After another Fernley turnover (they had seven in the final period), Lynch scored on a layup to stetch the lead to seven, 34-27, with 6:49 left.
It got ugly and extremely painful for the Vaqueros in the next 90 seconds. Fernley missed its next eight shots from the field (spanning three possessions), and Maribel Ledezma's three-point play pushed the Dayton lead to 37-27 with 5:19 left. Fernley only got as close as six points the rest of the way.
Another Dayton newcomer, Taylor Ingersoll, had a nice impact on the game. She scored six points, but missed a few short shots with unaggressive efforts underneath. The 6-3 Ingersoll blocked a couple of shots and forced Fernley to miss a few others.
"We just brought her up," Serawop said. "We needed another post player with D.J. out. She's doing what we need at this level. She has come a long way since the season started."
After a 15-turnover first half, Dayton caught fire in the third quarter. In the final five minutes, the Dust Devils outscored Fernley 13-4 to tie the game at 27. Cora Mebius' lay-up tied the game with 31.8 left in the third quarter.
That set the stage for Dayton's big push at the start of the fourth quarter.
"We did a better job with the pressure," Serawop said. "We want to control the ball and be patient."