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Glenwood wins, will face Broomfield

Jeff Caspersen
Post Independent Staff
Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado
Kara K. Pearson Post Independent
ALL |

BROOMFIELD ” Sometimes a bad break can clear the senses.

By the time Katrina Selsor dropped to the ground in pain after a hard second-quarter foul, things were looking grim for the Glenwood Springs girls basketball team.

The Demons had been outscored 12-4 in the first quarter, weren’t on the mark with their shots and looked rattled all the way around.



But watching Selsor writhe in pain for several minutes knocked a little fight in the Demons as they battled Longmont in Friday’s Class 4A state playoff Sweet 16 showdown at Broomfield High School.

That foul seemed to perk the senses of the Glenwood players, because the game’s complexion changed entirely afterward. The Demons summoned the mettle to erase that early deficit and take a 24-all tie into halftime and then managed to purge a nine-point Longmont edge in the fourth quarter to beat the Trojans 59-52 and land a spot in the Great Eight.



“When Katrina went down, that really centered our focus,” said Glenwood senior guard Sharaya Selsor, Katrina’s older sister. “We wanted to play for her.”

So how, exactly, did the foul go down?

Selsor had snagged a mid-court steal and was on her way to a breakaway layup when Longmont’s Kelly Bond leveled her. The junior cried out in pain as Glenwood trainer Marni Barton and others tended to her.

Turns out, she was just shaken up a bit.

“[Bond] just tried to take a charge and I ran right into her,” said Katrina, who later re-entered the game and even hit the go-ahead shot.

Katrina sat the 4 minutes and 18 seconds of post-foul time in the first half before coming back with 4:21 to go in the third. And her four second-half points were the biggest points of the game.

With 12 seconds left in a 52-all game, 6-foot-1 Demon post Kelsie Hert had a short-range shot blocked by 6-4 Trojan Megan Carpenter. Sharaya picked up the loose ball, swung in over to Katrina, who, positioned to the right of the basket, dropped in the winning layup.

After Longmont’s Betsy Weeks traveled on the ensuing inbound, Katrina found herself on the stripe with 3.9 seconds left for a couple of free throws. She hit them both to ice the game.

Sharaya followed by snagging an inbound pass and banking a 3-pointer as time expired for good measure. That rounded out her team-high points total at 26. Hert finished with 12 points, Katrina nine and Natasha Derby had seven.

All that came after Glenwood found itself down nine (46-37) with 5:20 to go. A 19-6 game-closing run changed all that.

Three inside baskets by Hert and a Derby 3-pointer fueled the run, as the Demons found their rhythm.

“We were settling too much for outside shots,” Glenwood coach Bryan Derby said. “I told them in the second half, go out there and start from the outside in.”

Derby’s Demons responded, particularly in the fourth quarter, with the Selsors regularly feeding Hert in the post for easy looks.

“They started attacking the basket,” Longmont coach Jay Darien noted. “Toward the end, I brought in our big girl [Carpenter] to try to shut that down. We knew the Selsor girls were good at knowing whenever that Hert girl breaks off. They did a nice job of getting inside.”

Shea Rasmussen paced Darien’s Trojans with a game-best 27 points.

Next up for Glenwood (21-3) is a meeting with the No. 2 team in the state according to RockyPreps, Broomfield (24-1). They’ll take on the 24-1 Eagles ” who routed Pueblo County on Friday ” back at BHS in today’s 1 p.m. Tanya Haave Region final.

Fresh off Friday’s miraculous win, the ninth-ranked Demons will look to pull off what would be perhaps the biggest upset in school history over the defending 4A state champs.

“We know they’re an exceptional team and it’ll be an honor to be on the same court as them, but we’d like to end their legacy, for sure,” said Sharaya, whose team made the Final Four last season. “We know if we want to win a state championship, we’ll obviously have to face them at some point. Why not now?”


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