Panther women’s JV hoops are Mountain Seven Champions.
After edging out West Henderson in the conference semifinal, on Feb. 22 the team geared up for their last game of the season. In their eighth-straight conference final under head coach Bekah Brooks, Franklin defeated archrival Pisgah to claim an M7 tournament title.
Having met in the tournament final in each of the past two years (both Black Bear wins), both teams seemed destined for a rematch throughout the season. In losing just one and three games in the conference respectively, the first-place Black Bears and second-place Panthers were again its two best teams.
After dropping both their games with Pisgah this regular season (53-37 in Canton, 39-34 in Franklin), the Panther defense stonewalled the Black Bears in the first, racking up four steals and a block in the quarter. But despite holding Pisgah scoreless in the period, Franklin managed just two points of their own on a deft move to the basket from freshman Anna Stiles.
Following the first-quarter defensive slog, the game opened up somewhat in the second, wherein freshman Layla Maloy recorded six points. Sophomore Makayla Pendergrass added three points and a steal to end the half up 11-4.
Points remained hard to come by in the third, as both teams forced each other to settle for tough shots. Freshman Lass Ward scored three of five Panther points to end the quarter up 16-7.
Franklin’s defense kept suffocating Pisgah in the fourth, holding the Bears scoreless for several minutes. On the other end, five different Panthers scored en route to an emphatic win, 23-10.
“I just figured if we could pack the paint and keep them from driving the basket, which they like to do, and [make them] shoot outside and hopefully miss some shots there, we could get the rebound,” said Brooks of her defensive game plan. “They have two big girls that like to play in the paint and score quite a bit of points, and we didn’t want them scoring. I told them to just be aggressive on the box-out end so they didn’t get any second-chance shots, and we did that. So, defensively, we played lights-out.”
In holding the conference’s No. 1 seed to just 10 points, Thursday’s championship was a coaching master-class from Brooks and her husband/assistant coach, Josh Brooks. With their fourth conference title in eight straight finals berths dating back to Brooks’ second year in 2015-16, the Panthers extended a remarkable run of success, to which she credits the determination of her team.
“This was just a really fun team to coach,” she said of her freshman-heavy roster. “They showed up every day, they worked hard, there was no nonsense at all, they didn’t care who got the credit, there was no drama; they just came to work. When you have teams like that and you come to get better every day and you buy in to what we’re trying to do, you’re gonna get rewarded every once in a while, and we did last night.”