Gallery by Greg Barnett
Gardner – Wednesday night in the Class AAA Region 3 co-final clash between PikeView and Sissonville, Cat Farmer was the smallest player on the floor.
In the decisive final minutes of the game, the 5-foot-1 senior stood 10-feet tall.
Placing her fingerprints on six of the final eight points, Farmer lifted the Panthers to a 36-34 win over the Indians to garner a berth in the girls state tournament.
PikeView is the No. 6 seed in Class AAA and will battle No. 3 seed Nitro at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday morning inside the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center.
The game will be a rematch of the quarterfinal overtime thriller at the 2022 state tournament won by the Panthers.
“We go as Cat goes. She is our floor leader,” PikeView head coach Tracy Raban said. “She has been through a lot of adversity and has had tremendous growth from ninth-grade to now. She has excepted that role. I have waited for to step in during those big moments and she did when she needed to.”
With her team trailing 29-28 with three minutes to play, Farmer knocked down a floater along the baseline which created a huge eruption from the student section directly behind her.
“It was a back and forth game right there. We score and they score,” Farmer said. “I just felt like I needed to make a play. Someone had to take control of the game. It had to be me.”
After watching a 10-point lead at halftime fade into a one-point deficit late, Raban called timeout and challenged her team.
“It was a gut check and a heart check. Who wants it more from there on out,” Raban explained. “Both teams are battling. Who is going to execute and who is going to stick to the game plan. We were here a year ago and we didn’t stick to the game plan. I felt like they listened to me and they executed down the stretch.”
Just over a minute after Farmer’s basket, Riley Meadows worked free behind the defense and scored on a nice move in the lane for a 32-29 lead.
Meadows led the Panthers with 12 points on the night, but her most notable work came on Sissonville first team all-stater Kynna Britton.
Entering the game averaging 22 points per contest, Britton was held to 12 points and no made field goals over the first three quarters.
“We don’t leave her,” Raban said about the defensive mindset on Britton. “The other four had to beat us. No disrespect to them, but we know what kind of player she is.”
“We had Riley on her and I challenged her all week,” Raban went on to say. “If she goes to take a drink, you go take it with her. You are smelling her breath. We tried to get in her head and harass her. I know as a player that is annoying. I felt like Riley did a good job. She is going to score, but I felt like for the most part we held her in check.”
The defensive work by Meadows forced an unwelcome shift in the Sissonville offense which struggled all night.
“She is one of the best players in the state. I can’t take that away from her,” Meadows said. “I knew it was going to be a big task, but I didn’t look at tonight as being how many points I scored, but how many I kept her from scoring. I definitely got what I wanted holding her to 12 points.”
Following a score from Britton to pull the visitors within one point, Farmer dumped the ball inside to Brooke Craft who quickly hit Hannah Harden slashing to the basket to push the lead back to three points.
Clinging to a 34-31 lead, PikeView went to work on the defensive end and came up big.
“We knew that defense got us here and we knew our defense was going to win the game,” Meadows said.
Following the defensive stand, Sissonville was forced to foul. With no team fouls in the final quarter, the Indians also used the stretch to play aggressive defense in hopes of forcing a turnover.
PikeView went to Farmer who stayed strong with the ball and used her speed to run valuable seconds off the clock.
“With the game as close as it was, anything can happen in the final seconds. I had to keep the ball in my hands and run away from them basically,” Farmer said. “It felt good to make those free-throws. God can move the goal and I think that is what happened because I was nervous.”
With 26 seconds left in the contest, Farmer stepped to the line and canned both charity tries for a 36-31 lead.
Britton hit a step-back 3-pointer with one second left before PikeView ran out the clock for the win.
“We missed a lot of layups (tonight),” Sissonville head coach Chad McClanahan said. “Normally those are falling in, but that is part of the game. You have to battle through that adversity and find the light at the end of the tunnel. We had the light at the end of the tunnel with the one-point lead. We just couldn’t chain enough defensive stops with scores. That just weighs in on you and it makes you play faster than you need to. I can’t fault the girls, they came out in the second half and we played well.”
PikeView returns to the state tournament for the third time in the last four years under Raban and the fourth time in the last five years overall.
“I wish we wouldn’t have kept it as close as we did, but we knew they would battle back with what was at stake. We knew they weren’t just going to lay down and give it to us,” Raban said. “I thought we went stale there in the third quarter with their zone offense. We didn’t move the ball. We got lost a couple of times on defense and they had some kids step up and knock down some shots. We never gave up though and battled to the end. It was a great game.”
S: 8 3 12 11 – 34
PV: 6 15 5 10 – 36
Sissonville
Ava Hillabold 7, McKinley Britton 7, Anna Soblitt 3, Makalea Ullman 5, Kynna Britton 12.
PikeView
Hannah Harden 4, Brooke Craft 4, Cat Farmer 8, Jaelynn Shrewsbury 2, Haley Justice 6, Riley Meadows 12.
