Pusch Ridge held on to beat Ironwood Ridge 43-38 Tuesday night at home to improve to 5-4 overall and 4-1 in power-ranking games. The Nighthawks moved to 2-2 in ranking games. The Lions led 39-37 with 1:20 left but closed the game out on a 4-1 run the rest of the way with the Nighthawks missing three free throws down the stretch.

Pusch Ridge senior Sedona Dietrich led all scorers with 16 points and she poured in 11 of those in the final six minutes of the game but she also came up with a blocked shot with 52 seconds left that would have tied the game up at 39-39 and she went down and scored under the basket to offer some separation at 41-37 with 45.3 seconds left. Still, as mentioned before, the Nighthawks had a chance to tie the game up at the free throw line but a made free throw from Molly Walter with 19.9 seconds left cut the lead down to 41-38 but Sara Njoroge put the game away with a driving layup with 13.3 seconds left for the 43-38 final.

The Lions threatened to pull away several times but it seemed like Scarlett Barton responded with a big shot every time to keep Ironwood Ridge in the game including a 3-pointer with 3:04 left to cut the lead down to 37-33 and her shot also kept the Nighthawks close down the stretch.

Besides the 16 from Dietrich, Nicole Njoroge added eight and Hannah Johnson scored seven. Barton led the Nighthawks with 12, Jaidyn Saucedo added 11 and Walter scored 10.

Ironwood Ridge head coach Daron Cross has a roster full of freshmen and sophomores with only two juniors and no seniors. He lost four seniors to graduation last year and scoring guard Sidney Anderson transferred to Salpointe for her junior year. Anderson averaged 16.9 points a game and she will pass 1,000 career points after she becomes eligible to play due to her 929 career points in two years. Still, Cross has a youthful team that will be difficult to deal with by the end of this year and into next year.

“Unfortunately, we missed a lot of shots and silly turnovers here and there,” Cross explained. “But that comes with experience and experience. So this year, we'll take some lumps here and there and there will be a lot of close games just because of our inexperience. We're going to battle.”

Leading the way for the Nighthawks is Saucedo, a freshman guard, who is the team’s leading scorer at this point.

For Pusch Ridge, first-year head coach Ken Urdahl replaced legendary coach Lonnie Tvrdy (436-138), who left the program after 20 years with four state championships. The program also lost its two leading scorers in Molly Garnand and Vienna Elliott to graduation and freshman standout Noelle Mulvanny transferred to the Phoenix area for her sophomore year but the pieces all seem to be there for a run this year with a roster full of youth and maturity.

“We're getting better on a daily basis,” Urdahl said. “They love each other, which is really, really cool. They all want to play for each other and we're just building.”

On replacing Tvrdy, Urdahl added, “I'm coming in as a newbie, they're learning my philosophy and learning my voice. My voice is a little bit bigger and louder but I'm just a big guy.”

Pusch Ridge will play at Canyon del Oro (0-2) on Thursday and Ironwood Ridge will host Rincon/University (5-4, 2-2) on the same night.

Scarlett Barton (Andy Morales/AZPreps365)