DUBLIN – With around four minutes left in the game, Terri’A Russell used her 6-foot-2 frame to poke the ball away from the ballhandler, and then gained possession while running downcourt.
Russell’s long strides got her from midcourt to the rim in a blink, and there was nothing any Edge Academy-Canada player could do to stop her from scooping the ball into the basket and giving Oakland Tech a five-point lead.
Tech went on to win 59-52, a victory that improved the Bulldogs to 6-7.
“We needed this win badly,” Hurt said. “It was a big game today, and I told them that. They responded.”
Russell and Jhai Johnson spent last season as rangy and energetic freshman posts. They were rebounders and complementary interior scorers on Oakland Tech’s Division I state champions, happy to take a backseat to seniors.
A season later, the sophomore duo is expected to carry the team as do-it-all forwards, and that’s what they did in the victory.
Johnson, the daughter of Baltimore Ravens quarterback Josh Johnson, scored 25 and Russell put in 17 as the two Bulldogs scored 26 of Oakland Tech’s 37 second-half points. Both forwards are considered Division I college prospects, and their skillsets showed why.
“Each possession, I make up my mind on what I want to do,” said Russell. “It doesn’t really matter (what I pick) because I know I can do a little bit of everything.”
Edge took advantage of a shorthanded Tech team, still missing injured forward Taliyah Logwood, in the first quarter. The visitors to the Bay Area led 17-12, an advantage that would have been even larger had sharpshooting senior Jordan Taylor not hit two of her four 3-pointers.
By halftime, the Tech defense had forced a number a turnovers and helped whittle the lead down to 24-22.
Sometimes, it seemed as if a missed Bulldog shot was actually the best offense, since Johnson or Russell were usually there to put back the miss.
The entire third quarter was a back-and-forth affair, with five lead changes. In many ways, it was a microcosm of Tech’s season, where impressive victories against California and Vanden were sandwiched between losses to the likes of San Ramon Valley, Mater Dei-Santa Ana and Etiwanda.
“I feel like we had the mindset of ‘We’re gonna win like we did last year,’ so it gets upsetting when you see the results we’ve had at the end of games,” Russell said. “With this win, we’ve just got to carry on and continue to do what we can do.”
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After Edge tied the game at 43 early in the fourth quarter, Taylor bombed in a long triple to give Tech the lead it would not relinquish.
After finishing up at the Jamboree, Oakland Tech will have almost two weeks off until it plays Fremont-Oakland in league play on Jan. 10. Hurt said his team’s schedule still has room for two other teams.
Even with the slow start, in which the team has already surpassed last year’s number of losses (30-5), Hurt is confident his defending champions will have a chance to defend its Division I state crown.
“I believe that we’ll play where we should play,” Hurt said. “We’re a D-I school, you heard me say it … we played D-I teams, and we should see them again.”
