With a playoff berth on the line, the EvCC women’s basketball team had everything to play for on Wednesday night at the Walt Price Student Fitness Center. The 4-9 Shoreline Dolphins was the only team that stood in the way between the Trojans and the NWAC Playoffs. Earlier in the season, EvCC blew out the Dolphins in their own gym, playing at home this time the Trojans looked poised to handle business and clinch the playoffs against Shoreline.

At the beginning of the game, EvCC started off strong with a 9-3 run to open things up for a normally slow Trojan offense. It wasn’t much time later that the Dolphins picked up the tempo, to eventually retake the lead. Most of the first half was back and forth with not much going on at the offensive end, but defense was key in this game with Shoreline hanging tough in an elimination game themselves. A loss to the Trojans for Shoreline would surely take them out of the playoff hunt and end their regular season.

However, EvCC made a small run at the end of the first half to give them an 11 point lead going into halftime. The star for the Trojans in the first half of the game was no surprise, as the teams leading scorer Breezy Shore would fill the stat line 12 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists. The leading scorer for the Dolphins at the half was Darrien Larson with 8 points total. The difference was the field goal percentage with the Trojans shooting 40.6% from the field, while the Dolphins only shot 30.0%.

The second half wasn’t much different from the first with Shoreline continuing to penetrate into the lane finding open shooters on the outside. However, the shooters could not capitalize only shooting 26.7% from the field in the entire second half for the Trojans. EvCC would build a sizeable lead of 12 points, with only seven minutes remaining, but Shoreline would not let their season end without a fight. The Dolphins went on a run and cut the lead to 5 after a couple of made threes with three minutes left.

EvCC eventually closed the game by making free throws when it counted most and sealing the game, along with the fourth playoff spot in the NWAC tournament. The Trojans won by a score of 60-54, Shore talked about the playoff clinching victory, “The game plan was to come out and be smart tonight, last year I thought we should have made the tournament, but it means so much more being a Sophomore and having a chance in the playoffs.” Shore also lost a prescription eye contact in the first half, and at halftime she borrowed a colored contact from a teammate playing the rest of the game. “It was interesting, once I’m playing the game, everything else just goes away,” Shore said.

After the game. EvCC Head Coach Chet Hovde talked about the teams game plan heading into the game. “The plan was to come in and beat them by one, we did that. It feels nice to seal up a playoff spot, but there is a tough road ahead. It looks like we will have to go to Oregon to play Lane Community College who is number one in all of NWAC,” Hovde said. This same Lane team beat the Trojans by 50 points earlier in the season.

The last league game for EvCC is against Bellevue Community College on Sunday, Feb. 28 2016, in the Walt Price Student Fitness Center for the last home game of the season.