Gallery by Heather Belcher
Charleston – The Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center suffered from a Yellowjacket infestation Saturday night.
The venue can expect a bill from the Wyoming East Department of Defense for its extermination services.
Trailing by 11 points with 4:29 to play, the Lady Warriors forced nine turnovers in the final 3:56 of the Class AA title game, outscoring Williamstown 15-0 over that stretch for a 46-42 victory.
The win delivers the program’s fourth Class AA state championship and its third in the last four years.
With East’s half-court offense struggling to generate open looks against a stout Williamstown defense, first-year head coach Ryan Davidson pulled out his trump card – a pressure defense that focused on trapping, denying the inbounds pass and creating chaos.
“This was one of those games where I hated it, but we couldn’t go to our normal rotations,” Davidson said. “The way that they played and as physical as they were under the goal, we needed to be able to capitalize on the perimeter. And we didn’t for about the first three-and-a-half quarters just like our first game here. But I thought definitely late in the fourth quarter you could see (Williamstown) getting tired. And we actually talked about it during a timeout that their passes went from short, crisp passes to cross-court passes. And we knew that if that kept happening, we were going to be able to jump those things. So I just thought we started up late and it’s kind of what we’ve been all year.”
Wyoming East trailed just 34-31 after three quarters but an 8-0 run keyed by Annabelle Haught and Faith Pickens put the Lady Warriors’ repeat hopes in jeopardy. The offense then picked up as all-stater Cadee Blackburn did.
Her 3-pointer with 4:12 to play ignited East’s run and the turnovers took care of the rest. Abi Baker forced the first, grabbing a steal and hitting Blackburn for a layup to trim the deficit to six. Clark was next up, picking another pass and finding Blackburn to slash it to four.
Blackburn capped her personal 9-0 run with a pair of free throws at the 1:40 mark but Williamstown elected to use its final timeout between them. The mistake proved costly and East capitalized.
“I think we were concerned about possibly turning the ball over,” Williamstown head coach Fred Sauro said. “And we did anyway. I think when we called that timeout, to be honest with you, we thought we had two and that was all on me. I’ll put that on me. But you know, we were told we had two timeouts when actually we had one.”
Participants of the last four title games, the Lady Warriors blitzed the tournament newcomers.
“I can tell you exactly what I said, ‘That was his last (timeout) and he can’t save them again so let’s go get them,'” Davidson said.
“That’s exactly what he said,” Blackburn interjected.
“That’s exactly what it was,” Davidson continued. “And sometimes it works in your favor. Sometimes it doesn’t. And it did today, but we knew that. We could really turn it up at that point because there was no way they could go except throw it to us or throw it out of bounds.”
The avalanche continued as Williamstown missed its only shot attempt of the final 4:31 of the game and East grabbed a pair of offensive rebounds two possessions and a turnover later, setting up the game-tying bucket by Abi Baker, assisted by Clark.
Unable to stop the bleeding, the Yellowjackets’ biggest turnover of the game came when they were called for an illegal screen with 35 seconds to go.
With the ball, Davidson called a timeout and delivered a clear message.
“We said in the timeout that we are going to take the last shot. This game, we’re either going to win it, or it’s going to overtime, because we were really starting to get what we wanted. So if it went extra minutes, we felt really good about that, too. So if we, again, we’ve talked about this stuff all year because we’ve taken some early shots at the end of quarters and allowed other teams to get good shots on goal. That one, we were taking the last shot. It was either win or go to overtime. So and I thought they did a good job.”
East did just that, breaking down Williamstown’s defense for a wide-open layup. Dribbling to the right of the key, Clark hit Alivia Monroe on a pick-and-pop allowing her to load and fire down to a cutting and open Baker for the decisive bucket with 14 seconds to play.
“I know that pick and roll was open and Liv can make that jump shot so I just passed it to Liv and then Abi flashed down and Liv thankfully caught that from the corner of her eye and slung it down,” Clark explained. “And then really I was just going for the pick and pop.”
Williamstown padded the turnover column twice more in the waning seconds as Kyndal Lusk stole a pair of passes. At the line the Lady Warriors made just enough free throws to eliminate the possibility of a miracle heave. Both came from Clark for the final points of her illustrious career.
The win came despite East’s struggles in numerous statistical categories.
The Lady Warriors finished 5 of 16 from the free throw line while Williamstown was 15 of 16. They were also out-rebounded 34-24 but they made up those margins scoring 24 of their 46 points off of turnovers.
“It’s about possessions,” Davidson said. “So if we’re going to lose on the glass and we’re not going to do the right thing at the foul line then you’ve got to make it up with turnovers. It’s got to come from somewhere. And that’s kind of what it turned into was that was the way we had to get this one. And I think we’ve done it a couple of different ways this year. But it seems like 9 times out of 10 it becomes our pressure that leads to layups.”
Williamstown, which had just 10 turnovers over the first 28 minutes, finished with 19 for the game.
“They doubled more,” Sauro said. “What we were trying to do was get a screen for our little guard Quinn (Bunch) – she’s really good, she’s very strong with the ball – and then clear people out and they bought into that. At the end they doubled. At the end they doubled her a lot and made it more difficult. Now she still was able to get it down there most of the time. But then they doubled with her a lot and their pressure package with a double probably hurt as much as anything.”
Williamstown was hampered as well by the loss of its top perimeter threat in Riley Landis who suffered an injury with 4:01 to go and the Yellowjackets up 25-20.
“I’d like to think so but who’s to say,” Landis said when asked if her absence impacted the game.
“I hate that,” Davidson said. “I’ve been through that. You hate to see any kid get hurt. And I was able to speak to her in the hallway. So obviously we’re gonna be praying for that young lady and she’s super talented. But this game is like that. When those things happen, you can either rally or you can let it affect you. And I thought for us, it was like, you know, bad things happen. But we say it all the time, ‘Bad things are gonna happen. What are you going to be when it happens?’ And so we kind of just said, ‘Hey, you know, we’re going to keep the girl in our prayers and but we have to go attack.’ That’s what we have to do. So we kind of went after them.”
The win caps the careers of seniors Maddie Clark, Emma Blankenship and Charleigh Price, making them the only senior class in school history to win three state championships in any sport.
The victory caps a 23-2 season for the Lady Warriors, tying the single-season wins record set by the 2016 title squad.
Clark earned her third all-tournament selection, finishing with 12 points and eight assists in the final game of her career. Blackburn, who scored 14 points in the second half and 17 in the game, joined her on the all-tournament team.
Rounding out the selections were Landis, Pickens, Mary Rushworth (Charleston Catholic), Emily Wratchford (Ravenswood), Addie Payton (Wheeling Central) and Kaitlyn Blake (Wheeling Central) who earned Class AA Tournament MVP honors after averaging 23.5 points per game despite failing to qualify for the title game.
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94.
