‘Anything can happen.’ Lafayette, Franklin County set for rematch in 11th Region finals.
Picked by coaches as the region’s two best girls’ basketball teams before the season even started, Franklin County and Lafayette have lived up to their billing and will reprise their roles in Saturday’s 11th Region Tournament championship game sequel to their 2021 clash.
Lafayette advanced to the finals with a 38-33 win over Henry Clay on Thursday night at Eastern Kentucky University’s McBrayer Arena. Franklin County followed suit in the semifinals doubleheader by defeating Madison Southern 37-28.
A year ago, Franklin County, led by eventual Miss Basketball Brooklynn Miles, won the region title 53-38 and from the outset overwhelmed a young Generals team making the program’s first appearance on EKU’s big stage since their oldest players were in middle school.
“Nobody’s going to overwhelm them this year,” Franklin County Coach Joey Thacker predicted. “You have to execute against all the different things they do defensively, and you have to know where Anaya Brown is at all times, because there are not that many teams that have one that can do the variety of things she does.”
Defending might be what Franklin County does best considering the Flyers held Madison Southern to just nine second-half points Thursday. And they’re led by a dynamic senior inside-out combo in point guard Nevaeh Carter and power forward Patience Laster, who Thacker believes is “the most underrated player in the state.”
This year with Brown, Lafayette has its own region player of the year and Miss Basketball candidate and a core of veteran players who remember the pain of last year’s loss.
“I know that this same group that got killed last year, isn’t going to get killed this year,” Lafayette Coach Allison Denton said.
Earlier in her postgame interview, she recalled how she and her players responded to stepping foot back on the EKU court.
“When they walked out, they said, ‘This floor is not as big as it was last year,’” Denton said. “And I thought, ‘Well, you’re a year older.’ When you keep coming back here, you get a little more comfortable with it.”
But Denton knows knocking off the two-time defending region champions won’t be easy.
“It’s a hard matchup, but what can we do at this point?” Denton said. “You’ve got to go play basketball. … Our job is going to be to go to our strengths.
“Anything can happen. It’s March, right?”
Lafayette (26-6) and Franklin County (26-7) will tip off at 5 p.m. Saturday at EKU. Here’s how they got there:
Thursday’s semifinals
Lafayette 38, Henry Clay 33: Shaking off a shooting slump in the third quarter that briefly cost them the lead, the Generals got 23 points, nine rebounds and seven blocks from senior standout Anaya Brown and secured a hard-fought win over the Blue Devils.
“We knew where we wanted to be. We knew we wanted to be back in the region championship,” said Brown, who also snatched a team-high four steals. “And to do that, we had to stay out of foul trouble and make sure that their bigger girls did not score in the paint.”
Lafayette had 10 blocks for the game, including three from 5-foot-10 freshman Savannah Simpson. Simpson blocked a Henry Clay three-point attempt with 19 seconds left that essentially sealed the victory. Brown, a 6-foot forward had five blocks in the first half.
“You know, girls can block shots, too,” Denton said. “The girls know they’re supposed to stand straight up and let them shoot into your hands.”
Lafayette also outrebounded Henry Clay by six, 35-29.
“It seemed like it was 25,” Henry Clay Coach Ashley Garrard lamented.
Those blocks and their rebounding advantage helped Lafayette stake a 26-20 halftime lead as one of Simpson’s other blocks set off a fast break finished by an Olivia Cathers layup just before the horn sounded.
But Henry Clay would rally. Some confusion in Lafayette’s offensive sets and a few defensive lapses gave the Blue Devils an 8-3 run in the third quarter. Lafayette went scoreless for more than six minutes, helping Henry Clay take a 28-27 lead with 1:20 left in the third.
“It was awful. I knew it might happen,” Denton said. “Six points (their halftime lead) is nothing. We might as well have been tied. And they hadn’t hit anything, and I figured they were going to hit (eventually).”
Lafayette regrouped before the start of the fourth quarter and responded by capping its own 8-0 run with a play for Brown that got her into the paint for a right-handed runner with an assist from Gracyn Grantz to take a 35-28 lead with 4:01 to play.
“We just had to settle down and run our offense,” Brown said.
Henry Clay pulled no closer than three points the rest of the way. The Blue Devils were led by Lydia Van Metre’s 10 points. Kennedy Williams, the team’s lone senior, added nine points and seven rebounds.
Garrard said her team had too many “little mistakes” in the end to grab the win and credited Lafayette’s student section for generating an incredible atmosphere and energy for their opponents. After going 2-9 in 2021, Henry Clay finished this season 18-13 with a 42nd District championship to their credit.
“I’m proud of these girls,” Garrard said. “I told them, ‘Don’t hang your head now. You fight to get back here next year.”
Franklin County 37, Madison Southern 28: With a slim 20-19 lead at halftime, Flyers’ forward Patience Laster’s eyes widened when asked to recall how Coach Thacker’s halftime talk went.
“He got mad. He got very mad,” she said.
Franklin County responded to the reprimand by shutting down Madison Southern in the third quarter with a 10-2 run. Jada Carter’s contested short bank shot high off the square at the 2:03 mark of the third was the Eagles’ only bucket of the period.
“I thought our kids really dug in and did a better job on their ball-screen stuff. And the biggest thing was in the third quarter, they got no offensive rebounds,” Thacker said. “Our kids can really get down and guard when they want to, and I felt like that was the difference in the game.”
Laster led the Flyers with 16 points and had a pair of three pointers that proved pivotal. Her long-range shot in transition from the left baseline with 37 seconds left in the second period helped provide Franklin County its halftime lead. Her three-pointer from the right wing with 3:03 left in the game put the Flyers up 35-24, virtually securing the win.
“She shot it really well in practice yesterday. She shot it really well in pregame today,” Thacker said. “And the two that she hit were crucial for us to give us some breathing room.”
Considering Laster has taken only 18 three-pointers all year, making six, the shots seemed even more impactful.
“Usually I drive it, but I just shot it. It felt great,” she said.
That doesn’t mean they were easy. She missed one to start the second half.
“I was kind of nervous, because I didn’t want to miss,” Laster said. “I knew if I missed, and I kept shooting them then I would have gotten in trouble. I’m glad they went in.”
Madison Southern finished the season as 44th District champions with a 22-12 record, the most wins ever for the program. Macie Daniels and Morgan Flannery each scored eight points to lead the Eagles.
This story was originally published March 4, 2022 at 7:38 AM.
