STATE EXTRA: SACCO: Sanderson filled the void

RICHMOND

You know a lot about Buffalo Gap’s girls basketball team. So we shan’t insult your intelligence. So don’t look for us to laud this team’s aggressive defense or hard-nosed play under the rim. No sir. No way. No how. This you know already.

Nor should you expect us to waste precious column inches and soy ink to tell you how this is a “team” in every conceivable meaning of the word.

Most teams have one or two clichéd “big guns.” The Bison, heading to their second straight Group A, Division 1 title game, have so many cannons they make a broadside from the Merrimack feel like a snail sneeze. So, when one of those “big guns” is in foul trouble all game and can only send off rounds for 16 minutes — like Sara Lamneck’s plight in Thursday’s 56-47 win over Franklin — it’s time to push another cannon through the portal.

Enter Courtney Sanderson off the bench. Welcome to the bright lights (again). Welcome to the Siegel Center floor (again). Welcome back to the state title game.

And while the usual howitzers sent their grapeshot flying pell-mell through the Siegel Center’s stale air, it was Sanderson who sat in the media room and listened to her fellow Bison throw atta-girls and good-on-yous over in her direction.

“It was huge,” said second-year coach Chad Coffey. “In a game where I was trying to find someone to step up ... Courtney was the one that filled the void.”

It wasn’t easy. Sure, Lamneck, in only 16 minutes of play, poured in 15 points. But with two first-quarter fouls and a third thrown on her back in the second, the senior’s aggressive lane play was thrown for a loop. When she wasn’t on the bench champing at the bit, she was being tentative of defense, protecting her team by trying not to foul out.

And, after an uneventful five minutes of play in the first quarter, Sanderson entered the second quarter with a hair under five minutes left to play.  She left as the answer to Coffey’s sub-in-and-out prayers.

Four seconds after she put her foot on the floor, she grabbed an offensive rebound and put in the stickback to tie it at 22. Less than a minute later, she added another layup to knot it at 24. With just more than three minutes left, she grabbed another offensive board and put it back up for the bucket to give Gap a two-point lead.

Rinse. Repeat.

Playing basketball is old hat to Sanderson. Getting asked questions about her play? Yeah, not so much.

“I’ve been interviewed, like, two times before this,” she said.

So that explains the figety finger-nail picking and foot shaking as she sat in front of the “lights and all those people” in the media room, she said.

She even drew laughs from the pen-wielding pencil necks when, after listening to her teammates laud her play, she rebutted with a simple, “They’re right.”

“I’m just glad I performed today,” she said in the hallway, no more comfortable away from the gazing eyes and not-so-tough questions. “It feels awesome. I love it.”

She finished the day with six offensive rebounds, eight total and the points to match in 22 minutes.

Her father’s head, she could only guess, was probably ready to explode watching her play.

“I don’t know what to say,” said Sanderson’s mother, Jeanette, as she stood in the stands waiting to see her daugther. “I’m speechless.”

Gary, Sanderson’s dad, still had his head intact, which allowed him to smile.

“It’s never a one-man team,” he said. “She made some huge baskets.”

And, through it all, the little girl from Swoope was wondering what all the fuss was about.

“Did I have that big of an impact?” she asked.

Ask coach. Ask Lamneck. Ask Holly Morgan. That answer is also a simple one.

Um, yeah.