SCOTTSBLUFF, NE – The Laramie County Community College women's basketball team survived a tense first half of play on Thursday afternoon against Otero College to win 77-56 and advance to the semifinals of the Region IX women's basketball championship for the second straight season.

It was a very back and forth opening quarter despite the Golden Eagles opening up with a 6-2 lead and looking like they were going to pull away, but the Rattlers were game for whatever the Golden Eagles threw at them and never let the deficit get larger than that through the entire first half of play.

"We talk about how tough this region is and we try to not get too high or get too low," Head Coach Ayana McWilliams said. "Today was just business as usual."

In fact, the sides traded the lead eight times in the opening half and had six ties before heading to the locker rooms with the LCCC women in front 33-32.

The second half saw more of the same in the first few minutes when both Otero and LCCC traded four point runs to end up back at a one-point game 37-36.

That was when things began to click for the Golden Eagles. The final 15 minutes saw a four-player attack allow Laramie County to pull away, led by Monique Marcetic-Vaotangi who poured in 17 points in the second half alone for a team high 24 points in the game including going 8-8 from the free throw line which she said helps get her in rhythm for other shots to start falling. 

"It just gives me confidence to shoot my shots because I know I can score at all three levels. It just gives me a boost," Marcetic-Vaotangi said.

She was joined by Halle Hester who nailed three triples in a blistering 14-2 run that opened the lead to double figures for the first time by the end of the third quarter and had the Golden Eagles in front 59-46 going into the fourth.

The Golden Eagles defense finished off the game by holding the Rattlers to only 10 fourth quarter points and continued to pile on the points, seeing only one player not get in on the scoring that saw the court and eight players getting involved through the game to cap off the 77-56 win.

Lylah Spring was strong inside for LCCC, notching another double-double by the end of the night with 13 points and 12 rebounds, but more importantly was able to hold Hedda Kohne to zero points in the second half after the Otero post led the Rattlers with 12 points in the first half.

Jamy de Kock rounded out the Golden Eagles in double digits with 15 points and a game and career high nine assists.

As a team, LCCC dominated almost every stat in the game. They outrebounded the Rattlers 45-31 including a 15-9 edge on the offensive glass and had 21 assists as a team to just 12 for Otero. Laramie County also bounced back from a rough first half shooting to finish the game at 44.4 percent including 40 percent from beyond the arc, holding Otero to just 13 percent from three.

McWilliams said the Rattlers were playing a zone defense most of the game and her team took the invitation to make the open shots.

"We just knew we were going to have to knock some down from the outside to get teams to switch up what they are going to do and the team was resilient when the shots weren't falling early on and we hit a few big ones. They came out firing on all cylinders in the third and that was what I thought gave us some seperation."

The win moves the Golden Eagles on to the semifinals of the Region IX Championships where they will face Casper College at 5:00 pm in Scottsbluff for the second straight season. Laramie County fell to the Thunderbirds 69-52 in the 2022 Region IX semifinals.

Marcetic-Vaotangi said they will need to work on playing better defense in both halves against the Thunderbirds if they are expecting to pull out the win.

"The first half (against Otero) was a bit closer than we wanted it to be but as the game went on we found ourselves and our offense came from our defense and we still did a really good job, but we need to be a little bit better at boxing out."

McWilliams said for the Golden Eagles, it doesn't matter who they play, they just need to play their game night in and night out.

"We are going to enjoy this win and go back to the drawing board later and come back tomorrow refocused."

The winner will move on to the Region IX championship game at 7:00 pm on Saturday night with a chance to earn an automatic bid to the NJCAA National Championship tournament.