Yogi Berra once said a game is “never over until it’s over.”

It sounds obvious, but the Clear Creek Golddiggers girls basketball team found out the hard way that’s true on Jan. 10 as it fell 54-46 to the Sheridan Rams at home to remain winless on the season.

The Golddiggers carried a 22-point lead into halftime and a 15-point lead into the fourth quarter, but were unable to hang on as they saw Sheridan outscore them 27-1 over seven minutes and 29-6 overall in that fateful fourth quarter.

The game started to turn late in the third quarter when Sheridan closed the period out on a 9-2 run led by a full-court press that Clear Creek had trouble breaking, and the scoring of freshman Shalamar Adkinson, who finished the game with 19 points, most coming in the second half.

“They just figured out the girl they needed to go to and the girl we couldn’t stop, and once that happened they just kept feeding her and we weren’t moving her out of the post area where she’s great at and it just gradually took its toll on us and our missed shots didn’t help,” Golddigger head coach Mark Ackerman said.

Sheridan also got a big break when Golddigger senior and leading scorer Ashley Gerton fouled out with 6:12 to play and Clear Creek clinging to a 10-point lead.

Gerton finished with a team-high 19 points, but only four came in the second half as Gerton spent a good portion of third quarter on the bench with four fouls. With Gerton out of the game, Clear Creek struggled mightily to score.

“She’s probably our (best) shooter, so when they couldn’t stop her in the first half they just didn’t know what to do,” Ackerman said. “But all of a sudden, their coach kept working it and I didn’t have a choice, I had to keep her in there and it was hopefully against another girl that she wouldn’t have a problem with until she to help and that’s when it got her.”

The Golddiggers took control of the game early on as Sheridan struggled to score and Gerton seemingly scored at will. The Golddiggers ended the first quarter on an 18-0 run to take a 19-3 lead into the second quarter.

The second quarter saw more of the same as Sheridan’s top scorer, forward Amber Ortiz, was injured early in the first quarter and remained sidelined to start the second. Ortiz was able to return near the end of the first half and contributed some points, but Clear Creek pushed their lead to 32-10 at halftime.

Ortiz was another big factor in the Rams’ comeback, forcing numerous Golddigger turnovers and being a second scoring threat along with Adkinson, finishing with a game-high 22 points.

No other Golddigger scored in double figures and with Gerton out of the lineup for most of the fourth quarter, Clear Creek had no real scoring option on the floor as they didn’t score for more than six minutes and let their frustrations get the better of them.

“They got the momentum and our girls just started to get flat about what they’re supposed to be doing. They just have to keep their composure. It doesn’t matter what you’re going against, you just have to keep your composure…it’s something they have to learn,” Ackerman said.