Midseason battle shows Franklin County holding fast to 11th Region edge
Franklin County’s girls’ basketball team served notice this week that the road to the Sweet 16 from the 11th Region remains paved in candy-stripe navy and gold until someone proves otherwise.
Despite the loss of Miss Basketball Brooklynn Miles to the University of Tennessee after five spectacular seasons, No. 25 Franklin County, the two-time defending region champion, remains the highest ranked 11th Region team, according to the Dave Cantrall Ratings.
And its 59-46 home win Tuesday over Berea — the 11th’s next-best team, according to Cantrall — illustrated why.
Speed. Size. Defense. The Flyers have all three in bunches.
“We realize we’re a fast team. … ,” said senior guard Nevaeh Carter, who scored 14 points with three assists and four steals as the spearhead of Franklin County’s breakneck defense and transition game. “We’ve just got to put more pressure onto the ball and just keep playing hard.”
Franklin County Coach Joey Thacker sang his point guard’s praises.
“I think Nevaeh Carter is as good a guard as there is in this state. And I’ve known that for years,” Thacker said. “She’s finally coming into her own and playing with a little bit of confidence. And I was real proud of how Jazmin (Chambers) got out and ran with her.
Chambers, a senior guard coming off an ACL injury suffered early last season, admits she’s still going through physical therapy to get back to 100 percent, but she’s getting there.
“I’m really tired,” she said, smiling, “But my teammates helping me and having offensive breaks and defensive breaks helps a lot. … I still don’t have my full speed and the jumps and everything.”
Patience Laster, a 5-foot-10 senior, leads the team in scoring and rebounding with 12.3 points and 10.6 rebounds per game. She had a team-high 15 points and 11 rebounds against Berea to go along with three blocks. Jhaven Meade, a 6-4 junior, had four blocks and helped Franklin County contain Berea’s leading scorer, Madison Howell, who was limited to nine points (six off her average) and was one of two Pirates who fouled out of the contest.
Freshman Cameryn Ridderikhoff leads the Flyers in three-point shooting, but Tuesday a pair of threes from sophomore Rachel Shropshire helped extend the lead in the first half.
“Their kids battled, our kids battled,” Thacker said. “We had some stretches there in the second quarter, third quarter where we should have pushed it out a little bit and we didn’t. Give them credit, they caused a lot of havoc for us. We’ve just got to play smarter, but I was proud of how they responded when (Berea) cut it back under single digits.”
Berea, a veteran team that will be making its fourth straight appearance at next week’s All “A” Classic as the 11th Region champ, had trouble settling down against Franklin County’s pressure in the first quarter and fell behind 17-7, a margin it struggled to bite into.
“We were definitely slow out of the gate,” Berea Coach Dammian Stepp said. “We were a little passive in the first quarter, not real aggressive. We couldn’t get into our offense. We let their pressure get us out of sorts a little bit.”
The Pirates (15-2) had lost only one other game and looked like a legitimate contender after a double-digit win over Lafayette earlier in the season. Lafayette finished region runner-up to Franklin County last year.
Still, Stepp felt heartened by Berea’s fight in the second half. The Pirates remained within striking distance and mounted a couple of rallies. But Franklin County’s ability to get to the free throw line proved too much in the end. Franklin County shot a whopping 30 free throws in the second half, making 23 of them. Overall, the Flyers were 29-of-37 at the line compared to Berea’s 15-of-24 — a 14-point disparity in a 13-point win.
“About half of their points were free throws,” Stepp said. “So that being said, you can kind of digest it and feel OK about where you’re at and know that we’ve got a half-season maybe to get better, to where maybe we can kind of close that margin against this bunch before postseason play.”
But Franklin County (14-4) aims to get better, too, and will be bolstered by a schedule that includes next week’s Louisville Invitational Tournament featuring some of the state’s highest ranked teams, including No. 1 Sacred Heart, the defending state champion. Franklin County opens with No. 13 Manual on Wednesday.
Franklin County’s four losses are all to top 25 teams — No. 5 McCracken County, No. 6 Anderson County, No. 18 Male and No. 19 Southwestern.
“We are (used to it),” Chambers said of the tough schedule. “We play tough teams so that when we go to state and regionals, then we’ll have the experience.”
