FORT WALTON BEACH — As Crestview girls basketball coach Kathy Combest tells it — and two of her players, K.K. McTear and Christa Johnson, would later confirm — her Bulldogs weren’t shooting too well two weeks ago.
They were getting the shots, Johnson explained. They just weren’t going in.
On Thursday night, at a scrappy Fort Walton Beach team that seems to play everyone close, Crestview never really caught fire as a team, but a hot hand in each quarter sparked the Bulldogs to a 54-42 victory heading into a district rematch with Niceville.
It was McTear, coming off the bench, who took hold of the first quarter.
Crestview didn’t even find the basket over the first four minutes, by which point the Vikings had established a 7-0 lead behind ubiquitous playmakers in Dede McLane (21 points) and Peanut Payton (11).
And then off the bench came McTear, who slipped in for a layup on the left-hand side and dished to Netaya Winston for a layup on the ensuing possession.
With 2:51 left, McTear buried a three-pointer to tie it up at 7-7, and scored the next four Crestview points, accounting, in some form, for all 11 of the Bulldogs’ first quarter points.
“We shot so poorly over the Christmas break so we’ve been shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting,” Combest said. “K.K. was one of the ones, she wasn’t using her legs, wasn’t going up in one motion. She shot well.”
As bright as McTear shined in the first quarter, she disappeared in the second, missing all three of her shots.
That’s where Johnson, who hadn’t even taken a shot in the first, picked up the slack. Ten of Crestview’s 12 points came off Johnson’s hands, and had it not been for her 5-7 shooting in the frame, the Bulldogs would have posted an eight percent clip from the field.
Alas, Johnson did shoot 5-7, and Crestview took a 23-21 lead into the half.
“I think I wanted to get off the bench and stay off the bench,” said Johnson, who finished with 12 points and 11 rebounds. “When K.K. came into the game, her shots were dropping.”
And it was McTear, again, who took over the third, dropping in a pair of threes and adding another two field goals to extend the Bulldogs’ lead to 42-33 despite an eight-point third quarter from McLane.
From there, it was all Bulldogs.
Tiara Payne scored all seven of her points in the final frame and McTear swished another three, finishing with 22 points and four assists on the night, dousing FWB’s comeback bid.
“Oh my gosh,” Johnson said of Monday’s rematch with Niceville, before Combest finished the sentence for her.
“We’re chomping.”
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Bulldogs eye Eagles after win over Vikings