HUTCHINSON – A year ago the moment proved just a bit too big for the Eagles.
 
Despite having to almost completely reload after an undefeated Class 3A state championship in 2023-24, Silver Lake was in position to secure a repeat. Up by 15 points on Halstead in the third quarter and leading by six going into the fourth, the Eagles couldn’t fight off the hard-charging Dragons and lost 48-45.
 
Flash forward to Saturday and a strikingly similar scenario was playing out. Once again, the Eagles found themselves in the Class 3A championship game at the Hutchinson Sports Arena and once again, the Eagles appeared to be on their way to wrapping up the state title, leading Osage City by as much as 14 in the third quarter.
 
Only this time, Silver Lake was ready for the moment.
 
Osage City cut the Eagles’ lead to seven points on four different occasions in the final period. But whereas they couldn’t close it out a year ago, this time the Eagles had the final answer. Silver Lake took the Indians’ repeat punches and countered them, finishing the game on a 10-1 run to win its second state title in three years with a 60-44 victory.
 
“Each state championship in its own is a special journey, a special ride,” said Silver Lake coach Kyle Porter, who won his first with Royal Valley in 2019. “With this one, what made it so awesome is the fact of how close we came last year and we didn’t finish the job. That left a sour taste in our players’ mouths.”
 

 
And all it took for Porter to know that the disappointment of a year ago was going to dictate how this year’s title game was going to end was reading their faces during a fourth-quarter timeout.
 
“I knew looking in the eyes of our team in the fourth quarter,” he said. “We were going to get their best shot in the fourth and we were going to take it and we were going to respond and finish the game and that’s what happened.”
 
It was Silver Lake the fired the decisive shot in the game. After getting out to a 6-0 start and holding Osage City scoreless for the first four-plus minutes of the game, the Eagles led just 11-8 at the end of the first quarter and by just one early in the second after Emory Speece scored on the Indians’ first possession of the period.
 
But over the next four minutes, Silver Lake operated at the level that had propelled it to a 27-1 mark going into the title game. Karys Deiter started and finished a 13-0 run with 3-pointers and fellow gunner Savanah Wende added one of her own in between. 
 
For Deiter, rising to the moment on the biggest stage is nothing new. She delivered a big performance in the Class 3A volleyball state championship match in the fall, leading the Eagles to a 25-21, 25-19 win over Holton and the program’s 10th state title.
 
In Saturday’s win over Osage City, she finished with 19 points, hitting 2 of 5 3-pointers and 5 of 6 free throws.
 
“Karys has played a lot of basketball in her life and that experience, along with Kailyn (Hanni), that pays dividends in a game like this,” Porter said. “We needed to have complementary scoring tonight. It couldn’t just be Kailyn or Savanah, it had to be everybody. It was nice to see Karys step up. Her off-ball cutting is phenomenal and being able to get to the rim, she finishes really unorthodox but it goes in and that’s always fun to see.”
 

 
While Deiter and Co. came to life offensively during that second quarter run that produced a 24-10 lead that eventually became a 26-14 halftime margin, the defense also did its part. The Eagles held Osage City to 0-of-4 shooting and forced three turnovers during that decisive run and just 31.3% shooting in the first half.
 
After Speece opened the second half with a 3-pointer, Silver Lake stretched its lead to 14 and might have completely put the Indians away had its free throw shooting been better than what it was in the period. The Eagles shot 11 free throws in the quarter, but made only 5 of them and that allowed Osage City to chip away at the lead, getting it down to 7 on a Peyton Pitts 3-pointer with 1:55 left in the quarter before the Eagles finished on a 5-1 run to go into the fourth up 11.
 
Freshman Jayla Jenkins scored eight of Osage City’s first 11 points of the fourth quarter to pull the Indians within seven three times and then Kaelyn Boss scored on a putback with 1:48 left to again make it a seven-point game.
 
But the Indians could never crack that threshold and the free throw woes that plagued the Eagles in the third quarter disappeared completely as Silver Lake made 10 of 10 in the fourth quarter to fight Osage City off.
 
“We just couldn’t get past that hump,” Osage City coach Kate Boss said. “We’d get it done to seven or eight, but never could get past there.”
 
As Silver Lake’s double-digit lead shrunk, Porter said not once did a sense of deja-vu cross his mind.
 
“We knew that they were going to get going whether it was Boss or Speece, and it was Jenkins that did it for them. She was such a fire along with Speece tonight. We knew were going to take a punch, but we just needed to respond. There’s always going to be that push and we just had to respond.”
 
The poise Silver Lake showed extends from its senior point guard Hanni. She showed nerves of steel as a sophomore when she closed out the Eagles’ 66-61 win over Hesston in the 2024 state championship game, hitting two free throws in the closing seconds to cap a game where she scored 26, going 14 of 15 at the free throw line.
 
After not being able to defend the title a year ago, Hanni wasn’t about to let history repeat itself this year.
 
“That was the No. 1 driving factor and it started in the offseason when we went to Pittsburg State (team camp),” Hanni said of the motivation for this year’s title team. “We were put in a really tough division and Porter told us ‘I don’t think you’re going to win a single game here.’ We had Shawnee Mission South, who I saw just won 6A, and they were our only loss there. That just built our confidence up and just brought it all together for us.
 
“I just kept telling myself when (Osage City) made that run at us, ‘OK, it’s time to lock in. It’s time to go score. Time to get a stop.’ I was telling myself that the whole time and I was telling my teammates that, too.”
 
Hanni finished with a game-high 21 points, making 11 of 13 free throws, including 4 of 4 in the fourth quarter. She also added a team-high 7 rebounds and 4 assists, capping off a stellar prep career in style.
 
Well, almost.
 
After feeding fellow senior Paige Heiman for Silver Lake’s final basket and then hitting two free throws for the final points, the ball ended up in her hands after a missed Osage City shot with 10 seconds left. She dribbled down the court and then flung the ball high into the air to start the Silver Lake celebration.
 
Only it landed out of bounds with a second still on the clock. 
 
“I told her, ‘You had one more second and you could have done that,’” Porter said. “She’s such a special kid and at our shoot-around I was in tears talking about how this was the last time we were all going to be together. We wanted to finish it right for our seniors and all their time and energy. For Kailyn to throw it up to Paige for the last bucket, a special moment for our girls.”
 

 
In addition to Deiter’s 19 points, Wende finished with 10 as Silver Lake finished the season with a 28-1 mark -- its lone blemish a 55-53 last-second loss to Rock Creek, which placed third in Class 4A this season.
 
While Porter said that late January loss wasn’t necessarily a source of motivation for his team’s run the state title, it was something that benefited the Eagles in the long run.
 
“With every game you’re going to learn from it and grow from it and improve,” Porter said. “When you lose, you have the attention of your entire team. Playing good competition allows you to see your warts for what they are and to get better. With Rock Creek, Trevor Keller’s a phenomenal coach and they have a great team that finished well this season. They gave us a lot of things to work on and improve and any time you have that motivation, it lights a bit of a fire.”
 

 
Jenkins led the Indians with 18 while Speece added 15 in her final game. While the Osage City fell short in its bid to capture the first state championship in program, the Indians had knocked off undefeated and defending champion Halstead in overtime in Friday’s semifinals to reach the championship game for the first time in program history.
 
“For Lady Indian basketball, it’s huge,” Boss said. “It’s hard when you lose because you’re not feeling very good. But those seniors, they wrote history in our program. The first team to play in a championship game, second place. It hurts right now, but that’s nothing to be discouraged about. You should be proud about it.”
 

 
CLASS 3A GIRLS CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
 
SILVER LAKE 60, OSAGE CITY 44
 
Silver Lake … 11 … 15 … 14 … 20 … -- … 60
Osage City … 8 … 6 … 15 … 15 … -- … 44
 
Silver Lake (28-1) – Ka. Hanni 5-9 11-13 21, Whitehead 2-5 0-4 4, Heiman 2-3 2-2 6, Deiter 6-13 5-6 19, Wende 4-11 0-0 10, Ky. Hanni 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 19-42 18-25 60.
 
Osage City (25-4) – Speece 4-9 4-6 15, Pitts 1-3 0-0 3, Kitselman 0-5 0-0 0, Boss 3-12 0-0 6, Jenkins 6-9 6-10 18, Serna 1-1 0-0 2, Watson 0-0 0-0 0, Lohmeyer 0-0 0-0 0, Brabb 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 15-39 10-16 44.
 
3-point goals – Silver Lake 4-18 (Deiter 2-5, Wende 2-8, Whitehead 0-1); Osage City 4-19 (Speece 3-7, Pitts 1-2, Kitselman 0-4, Boss 0-5, Jenkins 0-1). Rebounds – Silver Lake 28 (Ka. Hanni 9); Osage City 22 (Boss 7). Assists – Silver Lake 14 (Ka. Hanni 7); Osage City 8 (Speece 3). Turnovers – Silver Lake 8, Osage City 10. Total fouls -- Silver Lake 13, Osage City 18. Fouled out – none.