Gallery by Heather Belcher
Charleston – Even veterans of the Charleston Coliseum aren’t immune to the pressures it creates.
Wyoming East nearly found that out the hard way.
Unable to get their offense going, the top-seeded Lady Warriors relied on their defense to generate turnovers and points, escaping an upset bid against No. 8 Charleston Catholic with a 36-31 win Thursday evening in the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center.
The victory sends the defending state champions to the Class AA semifinals for the fourth consecutive season where they’ll meet the winner of Ravenswood-Chapmanville on Friday at 5:30.
The athletic Irish utilized their gifts appropriately, selling out to stop East shooters Cadee Blackburn and Kyndal Lusk while taking away Maddie Clark’s driving lanes.
The strategy resulted in a 23-16 lead midway through the third quarter with East unable to buy a bucket.
But from that point it was the Lady Warriors who turned up the heat on defense. A 15-2 run over the next seven minutes gave them a lead they didn’t relinquish.
“We were just going to play straight man and keep them in front and make everything hard,” East head coach Ryan Davidson said. “And then later on we kind of figured it out, really out of desperation because we weren’t making shots. So we had to find offense somewhere else. So it led to a lot more trapping and a lot more run and jump and we just had to take chances. Let’s be honest, they had us against the ropes.”
The shift effectively worked for the Lady Warriors who forced nine turnovers in the third quarter alone. Six of those came in the final three minutes with East down 25-19.
Clark ignited the run when she found Alivia Monroe for a layup with just under four minutes to play in the quarter. Catholic stretched the lead back six at 25-19 but a pair of free throws from Clark, a dish to Abi Baker for a layup and a jumper from Kyndal Lusk tied the game at 25 heading into the fourth.
The momentum carried into the fourth where Clark found Baker and Monroe again for the first two buckets of the frame, giving East the lead for good.
Meanwhile Catholic’s offense crashed, suffering an eight-minute drought where it failed to convert on a single field goal attempt.
“I think in the third it seemed like we were just standing a little bit offensively,” Catholic head coach Wes Hevener said. “We still continue to try to space the court. I think what we were doing in the first and second quarters, I thought we were doing a decent job of moving the basketball, spacing it side to side and then being able to really, get downhill and attack the rim and I don’t know that we were able to attack the rim as much there in the third quarter. The ones that we got, we just weren’t able to necessarily put them in but you know, that’s the only thing. Really I just don’t think we hit as many of our shots during the third.”
East maintained at least a three-point advantage the rest of the way, doing so without the services of leading scorer and all-stater Cadee Blackburn. The junior star found herself in foul trouble and picked up her fifth with four minutes to go in the game. It was an unceremonious ending to a game where Blackburn failed to score, the first time she’s gone scoreless in her high school career.
But in her absence the bench came through providing 16 points of East’s 36 points. Abi Baker led that charge with 10 points and five steals.
“I think Abi has been great for us all year,” Davidson said. “She’s kind of the kid that kind of hides in the shadows because Maddie and Cadee get so much attention and deservedly so. But she just works nonstop. And if you watched her play out there today, that’s what she is every single day in practice. That’s what she is every time she shows up. That’s how you win with kids like that. I can’t say enough good things about Abi Baker.”
The second-half change was welcome after East failed to show on offense as a whole in the first half. The Lady Warriors made just 6 of 22 shot attempts and struggled to contain Catholic standout Mary Rushworth who scored 11 in the first 16 minutes and finished with a game-high 18 points.
“That was a hard one,” Davidson said. “I thought that Charleston Catholic really, really took it to us. And they deserve a ton of credit for the way they played and the way they attacked us. I just thought they played harder than we did until probably the fourth quarter. But I’m proud of these girls. You’ve got to come down here and win hard games. They’re not all easy. And we haven’t had a whole lot of hard games this year. So I’m super proud of the fact that when our backs were against the wall, we kept fighting. So I’m just proud of the final two minutes and the third quarter.”
The game was Clark’s 10th in the state tournament and statistically one of her worst but when it mattered she found ways to help East win. She made all four of her free throws in the second half and dished five of her eight assists over that same span.
She did everything she could over the intermission to change the circumstances, playing into her superstitions and changing back into the pair of shoes she wore all season after breaking out a new one for the state tournament.
“Yeah, we (Blackburn) went in the locker room and untied (our shoes) and threw them down and changed them real fast,” Clark laughed. “We just got them and we were like, ‘Let’s wear them the first game,’ and I told her after we got back in there that were are never wearing those shoes again.”
