Charleston – Nitro came into the Class AAA state tournament as the only program in the field to have won a championship. That experience paid off.
Trailing 35-33, the No. 3-seeded Wildcats used a 9-0 run in the fourth quarter to take the lead for good, holding off No. 4 Lewis County for a 47-39 victory in the Class AAA title game Saturday morning in the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center.
The championship is the second for head coach Pat Jones and the program after he led the Wildcats to the title in 2021
Center Natalie Smith led the way for Nitro, capping of her state tournament run with a 17-point showing to lead all scorers.
For the tournament she averaged 18 points and 12 rebounds a game, earning Class AAA Tournament MVP honors.
“I obviously couldn’t have done it without my teammates,” Smith said. “They gave me the ball inside for me to go. Shooting, I didn’t really shoot that well. Maybe the first game, but then again, it was only like two to three. So my dominance is down low and I finally realized that. So, yeah, I mean, and a lot of times when I get the ball down low they double. So that leaves a lot of open teammates.”
The title game itself featured 10 ties with neither team leading by more than eight points. Lewis, which scored three points in the first quarter, weathered the storm to tie the game at halftime and took a one-point advantage into the final quarter.
But a 4 of 14 shooting performance in the final quarter doomed the Minutemaids.
“Hats off to Lewis County,” Jones said. “I mean, they’re an outstanding ball team. Coach (Joe) Nichols had them prepared. They shot the ball from the outside really well. We did our best to stay in front of them and close out. We struggled a little bit with boxing out and rebounding in the first half so we had a little halftime talk about that, and I thought we did a lot better in the second half.
“But I also thought our pressure defense kind of wore them down more in the second half and they weren’t really getting their legs under them enough to knock down as many outside shots as what they were. And I thought Natalie came alive in about the fourth quarter and just kind of really took over the game like Natalie does when you tell her what she’s got to do. But sometimes you got to tell her what she’s got to do.”
Ella Pinkney led Lewis with 16 points in the loss.
Nitro caps the season with a 25-3 record while Lewis finishes 24-4
***
The Class AAA all-tournament team consisted of Natalie Smith, Nitro (Tournament MVP), Jayce Sammons, Wayne; Addie Adkins, Wayne; Ella Pinkney, Lewis County; Kenna Maxwell, Lewis County; Brooklyn Shupe, East Fairmont; Brooke Cawley, Nitro and Kenly Rogers, East Fairmont.
