LFO jinx over SE intact

Published 11:24 pm Tuesday, February 23, 2010

After four tries this season, Southeast Whitfield’s girls basketball team is still looking for its first victory against Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe.

But if they need it, the Lady Raiders have pretty good motivation to try and set up one more matchup with the Lady Warriors — because that would mean finding their way to the Class 3A state title game.

LFO’s latest victory against Southeast came in Tuesday’s Region 6-3A tournament championship at Cartersville High School, a 39-24 win that made the Lady Warriors back-to-back region champs.

“We came here for a region championship, we didn’t come for anything more than that,” said LFO coach Dewayne Watkins, who’s in his first season leading the Lady Warriors after serving as an assistant last season — LFO finished second in Class 3A in 2008-09 — under Wayne Weaver.

“Whether it was Carrollton or Southeast, we came here to win the region championship. We wanted that home-court advantage. We haven’t lost at home all year, so to us securing home court was crucial.”

The Lady Raiders still haven’t found their breakthrough against LFO — the Lady Warriors won 63-57 and 50-40 during the regular season and 45-34 in the Sub-region 6A-3A tourney — but their presence in the region championship game was another sign of what kind of progress they’ve made under Elizabeth Crane, who’s also a first-year coach.

“I’m very proud of our program, I’m very proud of everybody sticking with it and fighting until the very end,” Crane said. “I knew with the players we had from last year that we could win some games. But I also knew coming in there were some things about the game they haven’t been taught.

“I love their previous coaches, but it was very evident to me early on that the fundamentals to win big-time basketball games were not there. And that’s going to take time.”

Now, the Lady Raiders turn their attention to some of the opportunities their first winning season in 10 years has set up — their first state playoff game in a decade is set for this Saturday at home as the opening round of the Class 3A state tourney gets under way.

“We’ll be the only game in town, so we’re hoping to pack the gym out,” Crane said.

As 6-3A’s No. 2 seed, Southeast will host the No. 3 seed from Region 7. Crane said that will be either Flowery Branch or Creekview.

“Having a new coach coming in, her first time, it’s really good that we made it this far,” Southeast junior guard Danielle Pearson said. “Honestly, at the beginning of the season we didn’t think we would, but we improved so much and coach Crane is an amazing coach.”

Southeast was outscored by just a point in both the first and third quarters on Tuesday, but the Lady Warriors took control with a 13-2 run that bridged the first two quarters and sent them to halftime with a 19-9 lead.

Southeast showed some fight in the third quarter, finally finding a little rhythm on offense to close the gap to 24-19 with 3:54 remaining in the period. But LFO was able to settle right back down with the same elements that helped it in the second quarter – persistent scoring and rebounding from the girls up front.

“They have post presence and, honestly, we don’t,” said Crane, whose tallest player is 5-foot-10-inch junior forward Briana Sosebee. “We have Briana, who in all actuality should be a guard but works her tail off down in the post. We just don’t have the experience or the size and that’s been our problem with (LFO) all year.”

Both sides struggled to find the basket early in the game, but LFO earned second shots the Lady Raiders didn’t and was able to make them matter, thanks to senior posts Jasmain Carey, who finished with 12 points and 13 rebounds, and Elizabeth Smedema, who had 10 and eight.

“We know what our advantage is and it’s inside,” Watkins said. “I felt like we had to exploit that.”

Brianna Coppock led Southeast with seven points, while Haley Lock added six points and four rebounds. Sosebee grabbed a team-best five rebounds, but after scoring in bunches during the second half of the season, LFO held her to three points.

The Lady Raiders were trying to score their second big upset in as many nights. A No. 3 seed for the region tourney, they earned their latest rematch with LFO via a 50-39 win over second-seeded Carrollton on Monday night.

Fatigue — perhaps mental as much as physical — might have been a factor for Southeast on Tuesday.

“Against Carrollton, we played the hardest I think we’ve ever played,” Pearson said. “We played so hard yesterday because we were determined to get to this championship game and have a home state playoff game. I think we were still just a little bit draggy and tired from last night.”

Southeast isn’t the only Northwest Georgia team that has found the going tough this season against the Lady Warriors, who are ranked No. 6 in the latest GaSports.com Class 3A coaches poll. LFO also has four wins against rival Ringgold this year, including a 46-31 win against the Lady Tigers in Monday’s semifinals.

“When you’re beat by a better team you’ve got to admit that,” Crane said. “And tonight, they were better than us.”

In other tourney games played at Cartersville on Tuesday, Carrollton beat Ringgold 52-39 in the girls consolation game, Cartersville beat Central Carroll 70-65 in the boys consolation game and Carrollton beat Ringgold 66-43 for the boys championship.