No. 2 D’Evelyn girls punch their 4A ticket to the Denver Coliseum

DENVER — D’Evelyn hit the gas early Friday night to cruise into the Great 8 of the Class 4A girls basketball tournament.

The No. 2-seeded Jaguars jumped out to a 14-0 lead on No. 15 Kent Denver in the opening minutes thanks to D’Evelyn’s signature full-court pressure defense. Sun Devil turnover-after-turnover led to Jaguar layup-after-layup to give D’Evelyn a quick double-digit lead on the Jaguars’ home court.

“Coach (Chris Olson) brought it up that we needed to start out on top better,” D’Evelyn junior Peyton Marvel said after the Jaguars’ 73-42 victory. “We have been struggling a little bit with that last couple of games.”

The only scoring struggles for D’Evelyn (25-0 record) came from long distance. The Jaguars made just one 3-pointer the entire night. Very odd for a team that has 137 3-pointers (5.7 3-pointer per game) on the season.

“That’s not us,” said D’Evelyn senior Rebecca Taylor, who made the Jaguars’ lone 3-pointer of the night at the 5:30 mark of the fourth quarter. “It’s OK.”

It was OK as the Jaguars made a living inside the paint. Marvel finished with a game-high 26 points. Taylor had 19 points and junior Macy Scheer was the third Jaguar in double-digits with 14 points.

“I feel like we go on our stretches where we have our fast breaks and don’t really get the opportunity to shoot the 3s,” Marvel said. “Either way is fine. We find away to win.”

The undefeated Jaguars did get tested in the second quarter by Kent Denver (17-8). Freshman Austin Duncan led the charge for the Sun Devils to cut D’Evelyn’s lead to 38-23 at halftime.

Still, the Jaguars answered going on a 15-0 run in the third quarter to put the game out-of-reach for the Sun Devils.

“This is how the rest of the playoffs are going to go,” D’Evelyn coach Chris Olson said. “We hit. They hit. We hit. They hit … and see who is left standing in the end. I’m very proud of how we responded.”

It was the second meeting of the season between the Jaguars and Sun Devils. D’Evelyn took a 76-26 victory over Kent Denver before the Winter Break. Scheer had a monster game with 26 points, which included going 6-for-7 from 3-point range. 

D’Evelyn heads back to the Denver Coliseum for the first time in nearly a decade for the 4A state quarterfinals. The Jaguars will face No. 7 Riverdale Ridge (22-3) on Friday, March 3, in downtown Denver.

The Ravens took care of business with a 58-22 home win over No. 10 Lamar on Friday night. Riverdale Ridge features freshman phenom Brihanna Crittendon, who is averaging more than 31 points and nearly 10 rebounds per game.

“We’ll try to hold her (Crittendon) to 30,” Olson said with a smile. “We are just going to go play team basketball and hopefully our team is a little better than their team.”

Marvel — who averages a double-double with 19 points and 13 rebounds per game this season — believes that the Jaguars’ balanced scoring will help tilt the tide in favor of D’Evelyn next week.

“She is definitely going to be tough to handle, but I think we can do it,” Marvel said of Crittendon. “Our defense usually is locked down. I think we can do it.”

It will be a busy three days — March 2, 3 and 4 — down at the Denver Coliseum with 24 state quarterfinals being played. Girls/boys 5A (Thursday), girls/boys 4A (Friday) and girls/boys 6A (Saturday) will give the chance for one location to host Great 8 for largest three classifications.

“It’s fun to get back there. It’s fun for the kids to have that experience,” Olson said of heading to the Denver Coliseum. “We’ll do something to get ready for that ahead of time. You have to score a lot of different ways in the playoffs.”

Playing in a large arena like the Coliseum has been an issue at times for teams.

“It is defintely going to be a change, but we can’t focus on that,” Taylor said of shooting on the Coliseum court that shooting background is much different than a high school gym. “We are going to practice somewhere that is wide-open and not like our gym to get us used to it.”