Gallery by Tina Laney
New Richmond – Wyoming East’s Class AA postseason title defense began Thursday night against the same team it beat in last year’s state championship game – Summers County.
The only team to beat East during that postseason run, Summers hoped to replicate that success from last year’s sectional championship game and send the Lady Warriors on the road for next week’s Region 3 co-final.
Those hopes were largely dashed by halftime.
East held the Lady Bobcats to 15 points over the final three quarters – just two in the fourth – en route to a 55-23 victory in the Class AA Region 3 Section 1 championship game in New Richmond.
The 23 points allowed by East illustrated how the evening transpired, marking a season low in points allowed by East and a season low for points scored by Summers. For Summers it was the fewest points the program scored in a game since Dec. 22, 2021 when it lost to East 49-24.
The Lady Warriors excelled in every conventional defensive metric as Summers turned the ball over 24 times, shot just 18 percent (8 of 44) from the field and never scored more than 10 points in any quarter.
Summers previously thought it had closed the gap, falling 43-38 when the teams met on Feb. 2, an improvement over the 31-point loss it suffered at East on Jan. 11.
But in that Feb. 2 matchup the Lady Bobcats played their hand, having center Gracie Harvey bring the ball up the court to help the half-court offense while negating East’s pressure packages. That allowed East to counter on Thursday.
“I thought putting Maddie (Clark) on Gracie changed what they could do because they couldn’t just walk it up the floor on us.” East head coach Ryan Davidson said. “She had to work. So she couldn’t just come down and step into shots. She had to work the whole floor. But then it put the ball in other people’s hands and I just thought they had to play faster than they wanted to play.”
The pace of the first quarter wasn’t to the Bobcats’ liking, but they made it work as East turned the ball over seven times to match the visitors. Neither team shot well in the opening eight minutes and it showed with East taking a 9-8 advantage into the second stanza.
It didn’t take long for the Lady Warriors to start pulling away after that.
Maddie Clark opened the second quarter by splitting a pair of free throws before Alivia Monroe and Abi Baker nailed back to back layups to expand the lead.
Battling foul trouble, Cadee Blackburn joined the party with a 3 for her first points of the game. Layups from Clark and Blackburn capped a 12-0 run over the first three minutes of the second quarter, staking East to a 21-8 advantage. Summers meanwhile continued to struggle, missing its first seven shots of the second quarter.
Avery Lilly snapped the seven-minute scoreless skid with a 3-pointer but the lid on the basket barely budged as Summers missed its next three shots, all at the rim and on the same possession.
“I would say they played really good defense,” Summers County head coach Rick Blevins said. “And then they got rebounds and then they got down the floor with the ball. I mean that – they just played better defense. But that’s all I can say. I mean, we didn’t bring it tonight. I don’t know why that happened, but it happened. We couldn’t make shots. They took full advantage of that and got layups. When that happens to you you’re getting beaten.”
Cheyenne Smith eventually followed Lilly’s 3 with a short jumper that cut the deficit back to eight but Baker and Blackburn scored the final four points of the half to push the East advantage to 25-13 at the break.
From there the bigs busted it open.
Gabby Cameron and Alivia Monroe helped key an 8-0 burst out in the first three minutes of the third quarter, pushing the advantage to 20 points at 33-13.
“This is what I thought we were gonna get out of (Monroe and Cameron),” Davidson said. “I said at the beginning of the year, I thought we could play inside out. I really did. And I think our strength is the fact that we can play on the perimeter. But now we can go to the post and Gabby’s ability to shoot it in the mid range, but also see overtop and pass makes it really difficult. Alivia is a beast when she gets you on her back. She’s just a problem. You either have to foul her or she scores and I think those two are playing extremely well together.”
East repeatedly delivered jab after jab, taking a 45-21 lead into the fourth quarter, suffocating Summers in the final frame.
“We had a lot of unforced turnovers, just trying to hurry,” Blevins said. “Of course, that’s part of it and part of that is credit to them for speeding us up. We just didn’t take care of the ball tonight. I don’t think we rebounded particularly well either. They had a lot of second-chance points. We just weren’t ready. We just didn’t play well. We didn’t make shots. We turned the ball over. We didn’t particularly rebound very well either. So I mean, that’s three strikes and you’re out for the match. When these didn’t play very well. We had a nice little run there at the end of the first quarter and were down 9-8 and then we just never got going in the second quarter.”
Clark, a two-time first-team all-stater and the reigning all-state captain, led East and all scorers with 17 points in the game, eclipsing the 1,000 point mark for her career in the first quarter on her third made field goal of the game.
“I’m really proud of her,” Davidson said. “She works so hard. She is the definition of a kid who’s worked for everything she’s got. She came in here and she worked at her craft until she got really good at it. So she’s just a hard worker. She’s a great kid. So that couldn’t happen to a better teammate.”
Both teams advance to the Region 3 co-finals which will be played next Wednesday. Summers County will travel to the winner of Friday’s Section 2 title game between Mingo Central and Chapmanville while Wyoming East will host the loser.
East is 4-0 against both teams this season while Summers is 3-1. The winners of the co-final games advance to the state tournament.
SC: 8 5 8 2 – 23
WE: 9 16 20 10 – 55
Summers County
Gracie Harvey 7, Cheyenne Smith 4, Avery Lilly 4, Abby Perisnger 4, Jaelynn Boone 4
Wyoming East
Maddie Clark 17, Cadee Blackburn 11, Alivia Monroe 10, Abi Baker 10, Kyndal Lusk 3, Gabby Cameron 4
