By Rodney Haas 

605 Sports 

SIOUX FALLS — With 19 seconds left in Thursday’s opener, Sioux Falls O’Gorman nearly watched its perfect season and hopes for a state championship come crashing down when the Knights trailed Rapid City Stevens 53-51. 

O’Gorman would rally to defeat Stevens 64-58 in overtime and took care of Sioux Falls Jefferson in Friday’s semifinal to advance to Saturday’s Class AA title game. 

Once there, the Knights would use a 12-2 run with four minutes left in the fourth quarter to finally get the separation they have been searching for all night for a 55-42 win — and finishing the year 24-0.  

“I think it showed our determination,” said Mahli Abdouch of the Knights overtime win on Thursday. “We were able to bounce back from that and play even harder. We didn’t want to be in a situation like that again and I think we proved that in the last two games.”

Sydney Terveen ignited a 8-0 run when she hit a bucket with 7:11 as the Knights expanded their lead from 37-36 to 43-36. 

The Lynx would come within three-points (45-42) after Ava Kellenberger hit a jump shot with 1:57 left before the Knights closed out the game with a 10-0 run.  

“Sometimes our pressure and the way we play doesn’t show up until the third quarter when we start to wear teams down,” O’Gorman coach Kent Kolsrud said. “I don’t know if we did that. Our kids played 32 minutes as hard as they could.”

Brandon Valley took a 11-10 lead after the first quarter but O’Gorman would bounce back to grab a 23-22 lead at halftime. The Lynx would outscore the Knights 13-10 in the third quarter to take a 35-33 lead, but in the fourth, O’Gorman would outscore the Lynx 22-7 to secure its title. 

“We just kept talking in timeouts that we need to find a way to get easy points,” Kolsrud said. (Whether it was) “Something off of steals, off of transition, off of offensive rebounds, something just to get some separation and score some easy points.”

Terveen led the Knights with 17 points while Abdouch had 16 points. 

Kellenberger led Brandon Valley with 14 points and Alyvia Padgett added 10 points. 

“Give credit to Brandon Valley, they came and really battled us hard,” Kolsrud said. “We knew it was going to be a battle. Our kids stepped up and we had multiple people make big plays.”