Spring Valley 70, University 64
Saturday afternoon the Little General Stores High School Girls Championship game at the New River CTC Invitational pitted two of the top Class AAAA teams in the state of West Virginia.
When the final horn sounded, it was No. 4 Spring Valley hoisting the hardware after a 70-64 win over No. 9 University.
”The win is big for us. A lot of people thought they would be a top-five team this year,” Spring Valley head coach Larry Bo Miller said. “Anytime you beat a team like that, it is a good win for our program and maybe seeding on down the year.”
The Timberwolves were red-hot in the first half hitting six of their 13 attempts from behind the arc to take a 34-29 advantage into the locker room.
We try to incorporate those threes into our offense both in transition and by penetrating and kicking out,” Miller said. “We knew coming in that they had a really good press. If we could beat the press, we felt like we would get good shots, it was just about whether we could make them or not.”
The lead briefly went to 11 points at 51-40 with under a minute to play in the third quarter before a 3-pointer right before the final seconds expired made it a 51-43 game.
Riding the momentum, the Hawks struck quickly going on an 8-0 run to tie the game at 51-apiece just over two minutes into the final quarter.
”We tried to play a zone and we don’t play zone, ever. We wanted to protect some people in foul trouble,” Miller said. “It backfired on us and we still lost one of our guards. We are not a 2-3 (zone) team, so we were out of position a lot.”
The game was tied twice in the fourth quarter, but Spring Valley never surrendered the lead, pulling away for the eventual six-point win.
”I had a little talk with my point guard there about running away from the ball. I told her if the ball was in her hands we would win the game,” Miller said. “She took it back over and we got some good looks that separated the game.”
Brooklyn Ellis scored 22 points for the Timberwolves, while Sophi Hutchison had 14 to go along with eight rebounds and six assists.
Alexandria Parker netted 12 points in the win and Allie Daniels recorded a double-double with 13 points and 13 rebounds.
Brianna Fox had 20 points for University, while Ella Simpson scored 16 and grabbed eight rebounds. Lexi Simpson had 11 points and six rebounds.