Saturday night was a tiebreaker in more ways than one.
Clarksville Academy and Goodpasture split their regular season series, with each team winning on the other girls’ home courts. In 2019, GCS defeated CA in the DII-A Middle District 4 title game. In 2020, CA defeated GCS.
They met again this year – and it was Clarksville Academy who emerged victorious with their second consecutive district championship, defeating Goodpasture 36-27.
The two teams had met just eight days prior to the championship game during the regular season finale. Goodpasture emerged with a 43-40 win on Feb. 5, giving CA head coach Charles Clark and his Lady Cougars a chance to step back and reflect.
“It was just a matter of maybe looking at guarding some different actions, different ways and just realizing who can do what in certain circumstances,” Clark said.
“More so [than] anything, the mindset, we were going to come in and try and take care of business right off the bat. I think last week, we came in with a little bit of maybe arrogance and maybe caught up to us. The loss last week definitely played a huge part in getting this win this week.”
In Goodpasture’s win, sophomore sensation Hadleigh Wharton scored a game-high 21 points, and CA knew that if they were going to win the championship, she could not have a repeat performance.
On Saturday, she was held to only eight points while CA senior guard Diamond Bryant went off for 18.
“I’m feeling really excited and proud of the girls,” Bryant said. “It was tough losing to Goodpasture a week ago, but we came back, and we did what we had to do and defended our championship title.
“I’m going to remember defending it. I know we lost last Friday, and that was something big to our team because we went undefeated, but coming back and winning today, it felt really great.”
It was evident from the tip that Saturday’s game was going to be low scoring. Clarksville Academy led just 8-5 after the first quarter, but the lead grew to 18-11 at halftime. Once their advantage grew to 31-19 midway through the fourth quarter, they began to squeeze the air out of the ball by holding onto possession, making it near impossible for the Lady Cougars to tack 12 more points on.
When the buzzer sounded, the celebration started. Before the runner-up and championship plaques were handed out, the district MVP and Coach of the Year awards were given to Bryant and Clark respectively. It’s the second consecutive year that the Lady Cougars swept the postseason awards, with graduated guard Sydneey Boykin and former head coach Carrie Daniels taking the hardware in 2020.
Though Clark won the award in his first year with the team, he relied heavily on his special group of seniors to get through the season.
“They’ve helped raise the bar for the expectations and the standards,” Clark said. “I’m really proud of them. Really leaned on them a lot. Obviously, I’ve had my experiences with it, but it’s always when you have preparation and they can call out certain things. They know how it goes, especially when you’re trying to keep them focused.”
Both teams have work left to do. Goodpasture moves on to host Middle Tennessee Christian School in the first round of the region tournament while Clarksville Academy will welcome Christ Presbyterian Academy. Both games are scheduled for Tuesday at 6 p.m.
CA defeated CPA 44-36 in their lone meeting this season. Goodpasture and MTCS have yet to meet in 2020-21.
It’s still possible that the duo of Lady Cougars could meet again this season – last year, Goodpasture defeated Clarksville Academy in the region championship.
BOX SCORE
Clarksville Academy (36): Diamond Bryant 18, Atyia Moss 9, Jayden Adolphin 7, Makayla Artis 7, Savannah Prather 3.
Goodpasture (27): LaZaviona Hawkins 9, Hadleigh Wharton 8, Kennedy Corley 5, Tanna Saddler 3, Maddie Byrd 2.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.