When it mattered most, Lauren West was at her best.

Playing the best basketball of her stellar senior season in the state final, boosting her Millard North team to the program’s first-ever state championship, has earned Lauren Huskerland’s award for being Class A girls basketball player of the year. In that 62-52 win over Lincoln Southwest Laura finished with 31 points, 13 rebounds, making 18-of-19 free throws, including her final 18 in a row. Not bad, kid, not bad.

“Lauren’s season this year was one for the record-books. Down the stretch she played huge in some of our biggest games, especially the last one,” says Millard North head coach Dave Diehl. “And when she did have a poor game in the semifinals she turned around and did an outstanding job of bouncing back which is no surprise because she is extremely driven and focused on her goals. She wanted a state title very bad and anything less than that was going to pretty disappointing to her and the rest of our team, so she wasn’t going to be stopped in that last game.”

Millard North finished its state championship season with a record of 23-4, finishing the season with 16 wins in 17 games, including that harrowing and historic, triple-overtime victory over No. 1 seed Lincoln Pius X in the state tournament semifinal.

“There is a lot to like about Lauren as a player, teammate and leader but if I had to pick one I would say it’s the example she set as a role model on and off the court. On the court she is a role model for how hard she worked to become a better player and a more complete player from year one to year four in her career,” says Coach Diehl. “Her and I talk sometimes and we look back and chuckle a little bit when we recall her freshman year and how much she has grown since then. Off the court she’s a role model for how she treats people - I’m so proud of her for all this.”

One of Lauren’s biggest off-the-court (sort of) contributions to the Millard North program has been her work as an assistant at youth camps, where she is sensation.

“Lauren has become somewhat of a rock star for those young ladies - they want her autograph, they want to take pics with her and she has a huge fan base,” says Coach Diehl. “Lauren has truly embraced that role and she makes time for them, poses for all the pictures, signs every autograph and does so with a bright, genuine smile because it brings so much happiness to her.”

For all the greatness of her senior basketball season it could well be the genesis for it all was rooted in disappointment at last year’s state tournament.

“I’ll never forget the look in Lauren’s eye after we lost in the first round of last year’s state tournament. I mean, she was furious after that loss and the look in her eye showed me that right there, then, in that moment she was locked in to winning state our next year,” says Coach Diehl. “Her and all the seniors were on the same page and those three seniors did a great job of leading us with accountability this year. Any time we lost a game this year we always - always - had an outstanding practice the next day. Never once did the players mope, or complain or blame others.

“Whenever we didn’t play well they were always accountable and got right back to work fixing whatever they needed to. That’s a huge legacy to leave behind and Lauren played a huge role in all of that.”

If you’re a fan of the game you love watching Crete’s Morgan Maly play. The kid’s not only talented - she’s going D-1, ya know - she plays with an easy swag that makes you, the Crete fan, feel like everything’s gonna be alright.

And almost all of the time it was this season, as the Cardinals reached the Class B state tournament final for the first time since 2007 and only the third time ever, with the 6-foot-1 Maly showing the way. She finished the season averaging 20.1 points and eight rebounds per game; her team finished a sterling 21-6, winning 14 of their final 16 games.

There are more numbers to support Morgan’s standing as the best player in Class B - she set school records for points in a season (543), scoring average (20.1), free throw percentage (90%), field goal percentage (61%) and three-pointers in a season (146).

“Morgan was our statistical leader but also our leader by example. She was always one of the first players on the court for practice and one of the last to leave every day,” says Crete head coach John Larsen. “She went through every drill always at 100 percent, always trying to make herself a better player.”

There are three other numbers that set Morgan apart from most - and I mean nearly all - high school athletes:

1. The number of Division I schools she’s verbally committed to play basketball for. (Creighton is the correct answer.)

2. The number of sports she’s an all-stater in. (Basketball, softball.)

3. The number of high school sports she competes in. (Basketball, softball and track.)

Add that up and it’s easy to see how she’s been named No. 1 in Class B girls basketball.