Platte Valley captures third state title in four years

JON DYKSTRA/THE FORUM
Platte Valley senior Maggie Collins holds up three fingers as the buzzer sounds on Platte Valley’s third state championship in her four years. Platte Valley defeated Northeast on Thursday at Mizzou Arena in Columbia.

COLUMBIA, Mo. — “It is the reason you coach basketball. Fairy tales and stories. … There is nothing, nothing like varsity basketball,” Northeast (Cairo) coach Brian Winkler said.

For Maggie Collins and the Platte Valley seniors, they wrote the final chapter in their varsity basketball fairy tale on Thursday night in Mizzou Arena with a third state championship in their four years — this one over Winkler’s Bearcats 64-52 in the Class 1 championship game.

“It kinda feels like I’m still dreaming right now — I don’t know if it has quite hit me yet,” Collins said looking at her fellow seniors. “We all talked about that. Obviously there are a lot of emotions right now. I can’t even express how special this is, how special this team is. I’m going to miss all of these seniors that I played with my whole life and all of these underclassmen. It has been a great year.”

That great year found itself culminating in Columbia with a showdown against Northeast (Cairo) who had just finished knocking off No. 1 Meadville in the state quarterfinals and No. 2 Delta in the semifinals. Just as Platte Valley has been playing without All-State point guard Brylie Angle after her knee injury, Northeast lost All-State forward Macie Harmon in the win over Meadville, but still managed to knock off both top-ranked teams.

That was until the Bearcats met Platte Valley — a team that only won its games by an average margin of 24 points this year compared to the offensive-focused 49 points from Meadville and 40 points of Delta.

While the lower-scoring, defense-first style will never rate as high in the state-wide rankings and metric systems during the regular season, that defense and toughness has paid off in the postseason with three state titles and a third-place finish.

“They just fought,” Platte Valley coach Tyler Pedersen said. “… First of all on the defensive end, you have to want to get stops, you have to want to play hard on that side of the ball. A lot of times there is not a lot of glory in that, especially in individual statistics, but you just have to want to do it.”

Collins was dominant with 29 points and 14 rebounds while also playing point guard against the Cairo full-court press.

“I’m not going to lie, if you told me at the beginning of the season that I was going to be one of our point guards — I might have told you that you were nuts,” Collins said. “I think with Brylie out, none of us really had a choice. It was just a matter of being there for our team. After that happened, I knew that was going to be my role from here on out. I accepted it. They all pushed me in practice to develop my handling. I think that good work and hard work in practice really paid off tonight.”

Northeast knew they had to try to take away Collins early on and to attempt to do that, they left sophomore Mya Wray — who stepped into Angle’s starting spot — open and Wray made them pay.

“When you play a good basketball team, you gotta give up something,” Winkler said. “… We tried to come in and tried to make Collins a priority and you gotta give her credit, she had a monster game. A lot of it in the second half when she needed to handle the basketball, she stepped up and did that too. You talk about a complete, dominant performance by a great player — nothing better than having it come on the biggest stage in the final game of the season.”

Wray, who added her fifth state title on Thursday — one team cross-country title, one individual cross-country title and two track and field titles — shot 13 3-pointers in the first half alone. She made three of them and had 13 points, which was enough with how the team defended.

“Mya knew her teammates believed in her,” Pedersen said. “She believed in herself.”

Platte Valley held Northeast to 18.2 percent shooting in the first half. Collins keyed that effort by shutting out Bearcat star Olivia Cross, who was 0-for-5 in the first half.

“Coach Pedersen putting the Collins girl on Liv in the first half was a really good move,” Winkler said. “She was able to keep her at bay a little bit.”

The Platte Valley lead was 30-17 at halftime and Collins opened the third quarter with a basket, but picked up her third foul moments later. Pedersen was forced to trust his star to play smart.

Collins rewarded that faith. Cairo went on a 10-0 run to cut the lead to 39-35, but Collins scored the next 13 Platte Valley points and by the end of that run it was midway through the fourth quarter and Platte Valley led 52-42.

“We were fortunate enough to get some wins down the stretch and beat a couple really, really good teams to get here,” Winkler said. “I am super proud of our effort today. We got beat by a better team with a better player. Hats off to them.”

Kali Redden added a mid-range jumper and a free throw for a 55-42 lead. Cairo would cut it to 55-47 with 2:15 left, but that was as close as it got.

“I’ve been saying it about these girls, they are winners, they are winners and they are going to do whatever they have to do to make the plays to come out on top,” Pedersen said.

Platte Valley closed the game with its five seniors on the floor — each of them with unique journeys to that spot. They finish their careers with a 118-6 record across four seasons.

Collins and Angle were instant impact players as freshmen and remained that way until Angle’s knee injury. Turpin and Redden had the more traditional routes, growing in the program — becoming rotation players as juniors and starting as seniors.

“Tina and Kali had a little bit different role,” Pedersen said. “They didn’t play a whole lot their freshman and sophomore years. They got limited minutes even last year. … They kept getting better, kept improving and each of those girls stepped up in huge ways whenever we lost Brylie to the ACL.”

Ellen Hayden had the most unique path as she started as the videographer.

“Ellen has been a part of this program for four years,” Pedersen said. “She started out when she was video taping and she was the most emotional, into-the-game video recorder that I’ve had in a while. I used to love listening to her commentary during a game. I’d actually stat it with the volume up so I could hear Ellen. But then she decided that she wanted to be a part of it even more and she joined the team. She is super unselfish. She wanted to be a part of something and I respect that a lot.

“I will never forget this group.”

The five seniors had unique paths, but on Thursday, they shared the same dream and that is why Coach Winkler and why everyone loves high school basketball.

“Whenever I first got hurt, things were a little rocky at first and we were readjusting,” Angle said. “We built the chemistry back up and I had faith in them the whole way. Mya was going to step up and do her job, take my spot and fill that role perfect. I couldn’t be prouder of any of them.”