Standley Lake girls basketball survives scare from Kennedy

WESTMINSTER — Standley Lake’s 3-point shooting started out on fire Saturday afternoon in the girls basketball tilt against Kennedy.

The Gators made five 3-pointers to jump out to a 19-10 lead on the Commanders. However, Standley Lake’s outside shooting cooled off and Kennedy nearly upset the Gators on their home court in the first game back from Winter Break.

“The first quarter was the way I thought it would go scoring 20 points per quarter,” Standley Lake coach Virgil Luben said after the Gators didn’t make a 3-pointer in the final three quarters. “It didn’t turn out that way. That’s going to happen sometimes.”

What eventually happened was Standley Lake escaping with a 50-43 victory, despite Kennedy taking a brief lead in the fourth quarter. The Commanders (4-3 record) dressed just six players for the non-league game, but took a 42-41 lead with 2:37 left in the fourth quarter with a driving layup by senior Morgan Williams. 

Kennedy gave up 101 points in its opening-season loss to Columbine back on Dec. 12, but had won 4 of 5 games heading into the road game at Standley Lake.

“It wasn’t what we expected. They (Kennedy) came to play. We underestimated them,” Luben admitted. “We closed it out. I was happy about that. I wasn’t happy with our performance, but we’ll clean it up in practice on Monday.”

Kennedy’s 10-0 run in the fourth quarter finally came to an end when Standley Lake sophomore Sydney Martin battled inside the paint and was fouled on a short jumper with 2:07 left in the fourth quarter. The successful 3-point play gave the Gators a 44-43 lead.

Standley Lake (9-1) scored the final 9 points to take the victory. Martin finished with a game-high 17 points. The graduation of Taylin Serlen, who is currently playing for Regis University after averaging 20 points and 10.3 rebound per game her senior year, has put Martin into the role of player to go to during crunch-time. 

Martin, along with seniors Kameron Mireles-Ciancio (8 points) and Mikela Alvarado (11 points) combined to score the final 9 points of the game.

“This is more of a team effort this year,” Luben said about the change without Serlen. “We have four players in double-digits scoring. That is refreshing. We have to rely on everybody. Our starting five are playing fantastic.”

Junior Aaliyah Valenzuela did all her scoring damage with a trio of 3-pointers in the first quarter for Standley Lake. Sophomore Rae Coronado finished with 5 points running the point for the Gators. Standley Lake’s lone blemish this season is an overtime loss to Frederick before Winter Break.

Standley Lake had one of the best seasons in the program’s history last year with a 21-5 record while advancing to the 5A state quarterfinals down at the Denver Coliseum.

The Gators will get a good road test against last year’s 5A state runner-up Northfield on Tuesday, Jan. 7. The Nighthawks took a dominating 71-39 victory over Evergreen on Saturday.