Mesa Mountain View girls basketball coach Henry Bribiescas should be used to the injury bug biting his team to start a season. It's happened again for the third year in a row with one or more key players sidelined by one malady or another.

On Thursday night Mountain View spent the fifth game of seven so far without ASU-commit Armani Hawkins idled by a knee injury. And the Lady Toros were facing Valley Vista, a team that handed them a 56-43 loss last week in the Highland Thanksgiving Tournament with Hawkins in the lineup. Valley Vista's two losses entering the night were to D-II power Seton and D-I power Dobson. A bleak outlook if one is a Toro fan.

Mountain View, however, swept that aside by playing with great resolve, particularly late in the third period and the first five minutes of the fourth, to emerge with a come-from-behind 49-43 win over Valley Vista at Toro Gym.

"We were very resilient tonight," Bribiescas said. "Valley Vista is a very good team and they came out throwing five-for-five substitutions to try and wear us down. We were behind at half, but our own mistakes giving them easy baskets was the difference. We kept battling. It was a great win for us, especially since it's a power-point game."

Mountain View (4-3 overall, 1-1 power-ranking games) trailed Valley Vista (4-3, 0-1 prg) at halftime, 23-15. The Lady Toros surrendered 12 more shot attempts and gave up four easy baskets off  turnovers that essentially were the difference at intermission. Mountain View started to see the game slip away as Valley Vista improved its lead to 29-19 three minutes into the third quarter.

From there the defense tightened and easy buckets disappeared for Valley Vista. And red-hot shooting emerged from Mountain View in the persons of 5-foot-5 senior guard Tennille Heywood and Snowflake transfer (5-10) Annika Decker. Hot shooting and how.

Heywood and Decker combined for 32 of Mountain View's 34 second-half points. It was Heywood's only three among her eight field goals that gave the Lady Toros their first lead (35-33) and the advantage for good with 7:04 left in the game. Heywood was deadly with short, mid-range jumpers and finished sinking 9-of-12 shots for a game-high 23 points.

Decker recovered from a tough-shooting first half that saw her connect on 1-of-8 -- a first-quarter three. She made 7-of-10 in the second half to finish with 18 points. Decker hit a couple of her shots off-balance and letting go off one leg. But most found the mark. With four minutes left to play, Mountain View had turned a 10-point, third-quarter deficit into a 45-33 lead thanks to a 13-0 run.

"She (Heywood) changes speed and gets herself in position to hit shots," Bribiescas said. "Annika was very instrumental for us. She had a terrific second half even if some of the shots looked unorthodox."

Mountain View did have trouble closing out the game, which took a little of the enjoyment of the win from its coach. The Lady Toros committed seven turnovers in the final 3:10 and saw a 47-36 advantage melt to 47-43 with 11 seconds left. Heywood closed it out with two free throws with eight seconds left.

Valley Vista's offense, like Mountain View's, boiled down to two players. Freshman guard Taylor Chavez scored 15 points and sophomore forward Kiara Edwards added 11 points. That dud combined for 16 of Valley Vista's 20 points in the second half.