When Western sophomore Jone' Ayers got the ball with a few seconds left in Friday night's tied Baltimore City girls basketball game with Poly, she had just one thought: "We couldn't go into overtime."
Ayers released her short jump shot just before the buzzer sounded and it dropped through the net, giving the No. 13 Doves a 64-62 victory over No. 4 Poly and setting off a raucous celebration in a packed Western gym.
"I knew I had to score my last two points. I had to win the game for us," said Ayers, who got the pass from Kierra Adams, who was doubled-teamed. "When Kie had the ball and she dribbled it, I knew I had to cut down. This is a big win for us. It's only the beginning, though."
The young Doves (9-2) announced their return to prominence in Baltimore City with the win, taking over the top spot in the city's Division I with a 4-0 record. They hadn't beaten Poly (9-2, 3-1) since February 2011 in the City Division I championship.
New coach Tasha Townsend, a former Doves player, kept four underclassmen on the team and three of them scored in double figures against Poly — freshmen Jasmen Walton with 15, and Cache' Waters, 10; and sophomore Ayers, 12.
Heading into Friday's game, the Doves felt they had missed a great opportunity to beat a Top 5 team on Monday when they let a 12-point lead slip away and lost to No. 5 Aberdeen, 72-66.
"They felt like they didn't do enough, they couldn't do enough to seal that win," Townsend said. "They just came out today even stronger, even more adamant about getting a win, because they felt like that game they were supposed to win. For them being young, they concentrated, they focused and they finished strong and that's all I ask."
In a game that featured 14 lead changes and seven ties between the next-door neighbors, neither team led by more than four in the first half, but Western opened an eight-point lead with an 11-3 run late in the third quarter. Walton fed Ayers for a layup and a 45-37 lead with 1:49 left in the quarter.
After that, the veteran Engineers, who kept pace by hitting 17 of 21 free throws in the first three quarters, started to rally. Jewel Porter's follow shot with five seconds left cut the Doves lead to 47-45 and Poly won the first nine rebounds of the fourth quarter to help them take a 51-47 lead on Aneah Young's jumper.
Western got the lead back, 56-54, thanks to a pair of 3-pointers by Waters. The Doves never trailed again, though Poly tied the game four more times.
Young, a senior forward-guard who finished with 16 points, hit a short jumper to tie the game a 62 with 19.9 seconds left.
"Energy made the difference," Poly coach Kendall Peace-Able said. "When people are high energy, you've got to match that energy and you've got to be poised enough to play along with it and then your seniority and your maturity should overstep it, especially when you've been in those situations before."
The Doves will have to bounce back early Saturday morning, because they play No. 8 Archbishop Spalding in the Public-Private Challenge at McDonogh at 10:30 a.m.
The Engineers will have a chance to avenge the loss to the Doves on Feb. 6 at Poly.