SPRING GARDEN – Championship banners mean something in Dale Welsh Gymnasium on Ricky Austin Court.
At practice on Thursday, freshman point guard Ace Austin said senior guard Bri Boles pointed out that the No. 2 Lady Panthers had won nine area basketball championships in a row. A fourth win over fourth-ranked Sand Rock later that evening would push that streak to an unprecedented double digits.
“It put a little pressure on us,” Ace Austin said.
It wasn’t easy, but behind five 3-pointers from senior guard Abbey Steward, Spring Garden earned its 10th straight area title with a 54-40 victory. The Lady Panthers (29-1) will host eighth-ranked Ider on Monday at 6 p.m. in Class 2A sub-regional action. Sand Rock (27-5) travels to top-ranked Pisgah.
“We’re proud to win 10 in a row,” said Steward, an all-tournament selection who finished with 15 points, seven rebounds and two assists. “There’s no other team I’d want to do it with than them.
“My teammates were getting me the ball, so I knew I had to step up to stay in the game. They just kept trusting me and getting me the ball. I had to hit them. I had to step up.”
Two of Steward’s 3-pointers came in the first quarter. Her second came with 2:16 remaining in the quarter after Sand Rock’s Lanie Henderson sank a trey to put the Lady Wildcats up 11-3.
“I told her I was calling her Abbey ‘Gamer’ Steward. We’ve seen it before,” Coach Austin said. “She’s been in a little shooting slump lately, but not one time have we ever told her to quit shooting. We get mad when she doesn’t shoot it.
“I’m so proud for her. I thought she was the difference. I thought she was the game changer tonight. She’s that kind of competitor. She’s undersized. She’s a step slow, but that doesn’t measure heart and effort and belief. I’m proud everybody got to see what we witness every day at practice.”
Spring Garden closed out the quarter with treys from Kayley Kirk and Austin, giving the Lady Panthers a 12-11 advantage.
“There were a few games where she had been a slump, but shooters shoot and she kept shooting,” said Ace Austin, who earned the tournament’s Most Valuable Player honor after posting 18 points, eight rebounds and six assists. “As my dad (Ricky Austin) said, if you can cut that MVP trophy in half, I’d give half to her. She helped us get going following them punching us in the mouth.”
But Sand Rock didn’t go away. Senior point guard Caley Garrett scored the Lady Wildcats’ next eight points to open the second quarter, including a pair of treys, as they regained the lead at 19-14.
Another Henderson 3-pointer near the two-minute mark before halftime pushed Sand Rock’s lead to 24-16. But three straight Lady Panther treys – two more by Steward and a buzzer-beater by Austin – gave Spring Garden a 27-26 edge at halftime.
The Lady Panthers built a 39-34 advantage by the end of the third quarter, but Sand Rock battled back again. A rebound and putback by Henderson with under seven minutes remaining brought Sand Rock within a point at 39-38, but Steward’s fifth and final trey with just under six minutes to go pushed the Lady Panther lead back out to four at 42-38.
From there, the Lady Panthers connected on 10-of-13 free-throw attempts to help seal the win.
“We were up 46-40 and Kayley gets fouled and goes to the line, shoots a 1-and-1. That makes it 48-40 and they don’t score again,” Coach Austin said. “That might’ve been just enough difference. If those don’t go in, that could’ve very easily been a different game. We made a few more down the stretch that were huge. I’m glad we made them when it counted.”
Sand Rock coach Lisa Bates said she thought her team “came to play.”
“We had a good start,” she said. “We had a better third (quarter) than we’ve had in the last three games. We just didn’t score enough. I think we only had 14 points in the second half. I was not disappointed in our defense either. It just kind of broke open when we had to foul them, but we were in good position.
“Near the end of the third quarter, it was a one-point game and we had the ball in our hands. I thought the girls played hard, played with guts. I’d like to hit a few more shots, but it was a battle. It was two good teams.”
Garrett led the Lady Wildcats with 13 points, including three treys. She also had three steals, two boards and an assist. Henderson added 11 points, including two 3-pointers. She also came away with 15 boards, two assists and a steal. Katelyn StClair finished with eight points, five rebounds, three steals and an assist.
Garrett, Henderson and StClair were all chosen to the all-tournament team.
Kirk collected 11 points and five rebounds for Spring Garden. Neely Welsh scored seven points and grabbed 10 boards. Both players joined Austin and Steward on the all-tournament team.
“We still did not play that great, but it lets us know we can win a tough, tough game playing like that and not hitting our shots, so that’s good,” Ace Austin said. “We’ve just got to stay focused and keep going.”
The two teams could potentially meet for a fifth time in the Northeast Regional final at Jacksonville State. But both teams have tough challenges to get past in their sub-regional games first.
“There’s no time to say we dodged a bullet. There’s another bullet coming at us,” Coach Austin said. “It doesn’t get any easier going forward. It’s going to be another tough one (against Ider). We are fortunate to be playing here at Spring Garden, and I think we can use that to our advantage.”
“We’re not going to put our heads down,” Bates said. “We’re going to go battle (at Pisgah). We’re going to go there and give it our best shot. We’re going to be really prepared to give it all we’ve got.”