Williams injury put the Royals girls basketball team in a tough spot

SACRAMENTO — Mission Prep girls basketball senior Kaylee Williams’ main assignment was to defend Brookside Christian’s Tiara Tucker, a high-scoring point guard coach John Krossa said his Royals had never seen anything like before Saturday.

Tucker was quick and fearless, driving for layup after layup.

For most of the game, Williams defended on a hurt right ankle.

Williams’ injury changed the complexion of the CIF Division 5 title game at Power Balance Pavilion — one in which Mission Prep lost 70-64. Considered one of the Royals’ best defenders because of her long arms and swift feet, the guard was assigned to slow down Tucker. For a while, Williams did.

But everything changed 3 minutes, 31 seconds into the first quarter, when Williams drove left to the basket, got fouled and stumbled to the floor. Immediately, she was in pain. It looked bad. She was visibly traumatized, lying on her back with her non-hurt leg shaking uncontrollably and her hands to her face.

As she was being walked off the court minutes later by a CIF official and Mission Prep assistant Bailey Brown, Williams held tears in her eyes.

Was this it for her high school career?

“There was no way I was going to sit out this game,” Williams said. “I fought through the pain and did what I could to help out the team.”

After being reinserted at the six-minute mark of the second quarter, she logged at least another 20 minutes on the floor, had four of her six points on a taped ankle and helped the Royals narrow a 15-point deficit in the fourth quarter to 5 with 46 seconds left. She said she rolled her ankle, but didn’t want to stop.

“It’s not really about me,” said Williams, who also finished with four rebounds, three steals and two assists. “It’s about my team. I know how much they want this and for me to not want to play through the pain, it’s just selfish and I’m not going to do that to the team.”

She didn’t stop guarding Tucker, who finished with six turnovers and 28 points. She got some help from her Mission Prep teammates, who came to help every time Tucker made a move to the basket.

“She went out there and gave it her all,” Krossa said about Williams. “She was in pain and all the emotional things that she was going through there.”

Williams entered the state title game averaging 11.7 points and 5.0 rebounds. She usually guards the other team’s best player. But her role came to an abrupt halt when she went down with a hurt ankle, which caused a hobble and forced her to arrive late to the post-game news conference because she had to ice it.

Mission Prep senior forward Bri Harvey knew Williams wouldn’t quit. The two had a brief conservation after the injury.

Harvey said she told Williams, “You gotta get taped and come back in.”

Williams had one simple response: “OK.”

“She’s not going to stay out of the game for something like this,” Harvey would say later. “I’m proud of her, that she tried her hardest. She pushed through the pain for her team, not for herself. Her effort was incredible. She was the one who helped us with defense, a lot. She gets us going and running and all that stuff. If we didn’t have her, it would’ve been a completely different game.”

This story was originally published March 24, 2012 at 11:09 PM with the headline "Williams injury put the Royals girls basketball team in a tough spot."