Karlie Valdez drives for the winner at the buzzer to lift Fremont last Riverton in state quarterfinal

Taylorsville • Only a small gap separated Fremont and Riverton when it comes to the schools’ nicknames.

And there wasn’t much of a difference between the Silver Wolves and the Silverwolves on the basketball court Thursday night.

A shot with 1 second on the clock by reserve guard Karlie Valdez gave the Fremont Silver Wolves a thrilling 48-46 win and a berth in the Class 6A girls’ basketball state semifinal round.

“I just tried to attack it, and I didn’t see anybody else was open. They just kind of left the basket open, so I just decided to take it,” said Valdez, a 5-foot-2 senior guard who cleanly put a short shot through the hoop from the right side.

“I was so excited when I saw it go through.”

After leading for most of the game, twice by 16 points in the second quarter, Riverton (18-6) fell behind when top-ranked Fremont (21-2) scored 11 straight points in the fourth quarter.

The Silver Wolves took their first lead on a putback by freshman post Emma Calvert at the 4:52 mark. That made the score 42-41, and it would be another two-and-a-half minutes before either squad scored again.

A lefty layup b Mazzie Melaney gave Fremont a 44-41 lead with 2:28 remaining.

Riverton’s Morgan Kane, the game’s leading scorer with 22 points, hit a pair of free throws with 54 seconds remaining. Those were the first points of the final stanza for a Silverwolves squad that gradually had lost its outside shooting touch after a strong start.

But with Fremont leading 46-43, the shot returned oddly and briefly for Riverton. Kaitlin Burgess somehow glanced the ball off the glass before it went through the net to tie the contest with 9 ticks left in regulation.

That set up Valdez’s coast-to-coast drive for the winning score.

“I felt we had enough time because 9 seconds is an eternity,” Valdez said. “You have so much time when it’s 9 seconds. It’s way longer than it seems.”

Valdez also was a player who was a catalyst early in the game. She entered the contest sooner than usual because usually reliable guard Abby Broadbent struggled from the field. Valdez popped a 3-pointer with 3:21 left in the second quarter, the beginning of an 11-0 run that extended into the beginning of the third quarter.

The guard finished with 10 points to share the team scoring lead with Melaney.

“I thought she played great from the get-go when we put her in early,” Silver Wolves coach Lisa Dalebout said. “She was way more assertive in going to the basket early in the game.

“We were playing really timid, and when she went in, I thought she gave us a lot of — I don’t know if courage is the right word — but I think people played more emboldened when she got into the game.”