Panther women’s JV hoops are on to the conference final.
After another excellent season, winning 14 of their 17 games, on Feb. 15 the team tipped off Round 1 of the Mountain Seven Tournament. Having ended the first half down five points, Franklin came back to beat West Henderson by two, advancing to their eighth straight conference final under longtime head coach Bekah Brooks.
On Thursday afternoon, the JV girls tipped off an action-packed two days, in which all four Panther teams hosted first-round games on Tom Raby Court. Both entering the contest with 9-3 conference records, the second-place Panthers earned the right to host West by winning both games with the Falcons this season.
Just six days after losing to the Panthers in Franklin 39-23, West returned to Tom Raby Court with a vengeance, ceding the contest’s first four points but quickly erasing the deficit. Despite two points and a steal from promising freshman Layla Maloy, Franklin ended the first quarter down 8-5.
Maloy stayed hot into the second, posting two more points and another steal to keep her team within range. West kept rolling at the other end however, leading 15-10 at the half.
Sophomore Makayla Pendergrass kickstarted Franklin in the third, posting five quick points and one of four Panther steals in the quarter. After calling timeout to stop the bleeding four minutes in, West’s offense regrouped to end the quarter up 21-20.
The Falcons pressed their advantage to start the fourth, keeping Franklin’s offense in check to score the quarter’s first five points. The Panthers returned the favor midway through the period, scoring the next seven to go up 27-26.
The game nearly ground to a halt in the final minutes, devolving into a physical slugfest of fouls and free throws. Tied at 28 with eight seconds to play, Franklin inbounded the ball to Maloy, who was promptly fouled and went to the line for two massive free-throws.
With the game hanging on a knife-edge, Maloy stayed cool under pressure, sinking Franklin’s biggest shots of the season to put her team up 30-28. With three seconds to play, a Falcon seemed to think time was expiring, heaving a shot from well behind the 3-point arc that missed by several feet.
“It was a nail-biter, but we expected that. That’s a good team, and it’s hard to beat a team three times, [especially] beating them twice in the season and knowing the tournament’s totally different,” said Brooks. “They had a totally different game plan than the last time, which I fully expected – they played man-to-man the whole time last time we played and two different types of zones and a man [Thursday night], so we got to see some different looks. … We didn’t play great, but we executed at the end.”
In making their eighth straight conference final under Brooks, the Panthers extended a remarkable run of success. While Brooks’ coaching has been the common factor between all eight teams, she was quick to deflect credit from Thursday’s win.
“We executed with our full-court press, which allowed us to get back in the game,” she said. “We missed some clutch free throws, but then again, at the end we made some clutch free throws, and all you can do is sit there and pray that they miss theirs. They did a little bit, and I just thought in the execution of those things that I asked, they did well. They tried very hard, played together as a team, and we got the win.”
After beating West, Franklin planned a trip to the Falcons’ gym, site of the conference final Feb. 22.
There, they’ll lock horns with 11-1 Pisgah, who won both games between the rivals this season.