With 4 minutes, 59 seconds left to play in the Kelso Supply Holiday Classic championship and things tied at 30, Saxony Lutheran's Brianna Mueller sent a 3-pointer sailing toward the basket from the top left corner. The senior guard took hard contact, the whistle blew and the ball slid through the netting. From her back, Mueller pounded the court.
Mueller -- and her Crusader team -- had found their mojo.
That four-point play gave top-seeded Saxony Lutheran a 34-30 lead -- its first advantage since the first quarter -- over No. 2 seed Jackson (7-3), and the Crusaders (7-1) held on the rest of the way, defeating the Indians 46-36 Tuesday night at the Show Me Center.
"I think tonight we found our mojo," Mueller said. "I think tonight we were Crusader basketball, and we haven't been that all season. That's why we won this game and this tournament. We started playing together and how we played all last year."
Mueller's four-point play came after a mid-game lull in which Jackson had led by as many as nine points.
"Oh, heck yeah," Mueller said when asked if that play was the mojo finder. "I think one of our problems [has been] we're kind of just there and just playing, and not getting excited when things like that happen -- when someone draws a charge or someone knocks down a 3 and gets fouled. I think that was a big difference. Every time someone did something good, we got excited for each other, and we build off each other."
Mueller finished with 23 points, with six 3s on the night. Grace Mirly added 17 points, including eight in the final quarter. As a team, Saxony was 7 of 18 from 3-point range.
Rylee Stafford paced Jackson with 13 points and three 3s. Autumn Reid added eight points. The Indians were 8 of 23 from outside the arc and shot just 14 of 49 (28.6 percent) from the field.
In many ways, defense was the story of the night, and when Jackson defended well in the middle two quarters, it held a lead.
"Early on in the first quarter I felt we were a little tentative to guard [Mueller]," Jackson coach Tyler Abernathy said, "and then I thought we got a lot of confidence and guarded really well, and then we went back to being tentative. We wouldn't get up on her *... and were kind of hoping she'd miss shots, and she made shots.
"In the fourth quarter they played well, we lost a few assignments, and when you do that against a good team, they made shots."
Jackson came out of halftime and stretched its four-point lead into a nine-point one, with Cassidi Tomsu draining a 3 over a defender and then converting on a putback to make things 27-18 in favor of the Indians with 3:51 left in the period. But then Saxony Lutheran began to find its drive, ending the quarter on a 7-0 run that cut Jackson's lead to just 27-25 after three periods of play.
Mirly immediately erased that deficit inside the fourth quarter's first 40 seconds, laying the ball in to tie the score.
"Honestly, I felt like we got up [nine] points in the third quarter with about four minutes to go and then it got cut down to two to start the fourth. I felt like that stretch was really, really important," Abernathy said. "We made a few mental mistakes and they did some things well."
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Stafford responded for the Indians by draining a long-distance shot, but Mueller answered back on the other end with an NBA-range 3 that began to tip the game in a hurry. On Jackson's ensuing possession Mueller drew a charge, then went down the floor to hit her 3 and drew the foul. Just like that, the Crusaders took control.
Stafford hit another 3-pointer to keep her side within one, but Saxony Lutheran went on a 12-3 run to end the game, hitting free throws down the stretch to maintain its edge.
The Crusaders were 13 of 13 from the charity stripe, while Jackson was 0 of 2. That was the difference, statistically, in the game.
But also critical for Saxony were late contributions from players not named Mueller, as Mirly and Maddie Brune both shouldered some of the load during the game's final eight minutes.
Crusader coach Sam Sides also praised his team's performance in the paint, where it should have been overmatched by a bigger Indian squad but Brune, Ali Galemmo and company generally held their own.
"I was extremely happy with our post players," Sides said. "We were out-manned, undersized, underweight, but they battled the whole game. I was really concerned with them hurting us inside with their size, but they really didn't -- they hurt us more from the 3-point line than in the paint.
"They're big, they're long, they're physical and he runs eight or nine people in there. They're hard to work against. I couldn't be happier with the heart and determination [we] showed.
"There were a lot of positives. We took care of the ball better. I told them the other day we're too cool for school sometimes, trying to do stuff, trying to get fancy. Just be business. We were business-like tonight and it paid off."
The teams traded 3-pointers in the game's early going, combining for five in the first quarter -- 15 of 19 total points. The sides were tied at 8 inside of a minute left until Mueller drained a triple with 27 seconds on the clock to give the Crusaders an 11-8 advantage after one period of play.
Mueller became her team's lone source of offense in the second quarter though, and it wasn't enough. Jackson held Saxony to five points in the frame and kept things tight until Stafford hit a 3 from the top of the arc with 1:12 on the clock to give the Indians their first lead of the game, 18-16.
Jackson extended that edge when Mallorie Maintz laid out to knock the ball loose near midcourt before getting the ball out to Stafford in transition for an easy layup with 2 seconds left and a 20-16 halftime advantage.
Stafford had six points in the quarter.
The Holiday Classic All-Tournament team featured Saxony Lutheran's Mueller and Mirly, Jackson's Tomsu and Alexis Allstun, Notre Dame's Lexi Welter and Faith Essner, Cape Central's Abbie Reece, Perryville's Ahnie Hoff and Sikeston's Erica Peet and Tyeshia Mitchell.
Jackson 8 12 7 9 -- 36
Saxony Luth. 11 5 9 21 -- 46
JACKSON (36) -- Rylee Stafford 13, Autumn Reid 8, Cassidi Tomsu 7, Abby Hermann 3, Nikki Sotak 5. FG 14-49, FT 0-2, F 15. (3-pointers: Stafford 3, Reid 2, Tomsu, Hermann, Sotak. Fouled out: Reid.)
SAXONY LUTHERAN (46) -- Brianna Mueller 23, Grace Mirly 17, Maddie Brune 4, Ali Galemmo 2. FG 13-34, FT 13-13, F 9. (3-pointers: Mueller 6, Mirly. Fouled out: None.)
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