Tates Creek proves records don’t matter in three-game sweep to 43rd District championship
As it turned out, the Tates Creek girls’ basketball team is who everyone thought they were.
Despite only having four wins against 11 losses during the regular season; despite having to play in the low-seed play-in game in the 43rd District Tournament and despite seeing a starter and key reserve both foul out in the district finals down the stretch — the Commodores proved they are one of the top teams in the 11th Region.
And with a 64-60 overtime win over Lafayette in the 43rd District finals, they are champions.
After the win, Coach Matt Yates noted that in the preseason, his team was considered one of the region’s favorites to contend for postseason hardware. Then the losses piled up.
“As a coach I always talk about perseverance and dealing with adversity and that’s exactly what the girls did,” Yates said of his team’s struggles during the year. “They could have easily laid it down and said this year is just a dog year, but they said no, let’s find a way. And they believed and we did it.”
By winning three district tourney games in five days at Lafayette High School, the Commodores now get to host an 11th Region Tournament first-round game when it begins next week.
“They didn’t stop loving each other and trying to find a way,” Yates said. “We just came together at the right time.”
Tates Creek hadn’t won a district title since 2005. They had nine straight losing seasons in the interim and five different coaches.
Times have changed.
“We’re now shifting to a winning program and people know that we’re a really good team,” said Tates Creek junior guard Maddie Kauffman, who led all scorers with 28 points, including five three-pointers, and was named the tournament’s most valuable player. “I think we definitely have a winning mentality now. We know what we’re capable of and we just need to make it happen every night.”
The difference Friday night proved to be Tates Creek’s tenacious man-to-man defense, an aggressive, in-your-face style that disrupted Lafayette and held the Generals to 33 percent shooting from the field for the game.
“They just bought in and said that’s the only way we’re going to win,” Yates said. “If our guards can pressure everybody else’s guards and do it over a whole game, they know that eventually they will break down. That’s what we try to do.”
After going down by five points with 3:36 left in regulation when Lafayette’s Anaya Brown completed a three-point play with a free throw, Tates Creek held Lafayette scoreless over the next four possessions, mounting a 6-0 rally capped by freshman Ashton Harris’ pick-and-roll layup which put Tates Creek up 53-52 with 2:18 remaining.
Both offenses sputtered to a 54-54 tie at the end of regulation, but Tates Creek took the initiative in the extra period.
The back-and-forth game had five ties and five lead changes. Lafayette led by seven at the end of one quarter, by three at halftime and by five at the end of the third period. But momentum swung in the second half as Tates Creek made 50 percent of its shots after halftime.
And when Alisce Lyvers grabbed an offensive rebound and put the ball back in for a 56-54 lead just over one minute into overtime, the Commodores never trailed again.
“We just came out with a lot of energy in overtime, a lot of it on defense and we made our free throws down the stretch,” said Kauffman, who made five out of six free throws in the overtime in addition to hitting other big shots all night, including a falling down three-pointer that kept the Commodores in the game early in the fourth quarter.
“Funny enough, you have to make her shoot,” Yates said of Kauffman. “She doesn’t want to shoot too much, and I have to get on her about shooting more. She’s a leader in how she treats everybody and we’re lucky to have her.”
Both Kauffman and fellow junior Caty Armishaw credited a solid week of practice in the last week of the regular season and a concerted effort on the part of the players to help inspire each other with positive text messages to each other.
“Coming out of the four seed, people really doubted us, and we just wanted to come together this week and play our best basketball,” Kauffman said.
Harris chipped in 18 points for Tates Creek. Brown led Lafayette (14-6) in scoring with 23 points and passed the 1,000-point milestone for her career during the game. Lauren Walton added 19 for the Generals, who also advanced to next week’s 11th Region Tournament as runner-up.
43rd District Girls’ All-Tournament Team
Maddie Kauffman (MVP), Caty Armishaw, Ashton Harris and Alisce Lyvers, Tates Creek; Olivia Cathers, Lauren Walton and Anaya Brown, Lafayette; Ariel West and Olivia Bretz, Lexington Catholic; Elise Ellison-Coons and Haley Gadd, Paul Laurence Dunbar; and Jaden Kenney, Lexington Christian.
This story was originally published March 20, 2021 at 7:39 AM.
