The season is at an end for Panther hoops.
After the Mountain Seven Conference Finals Feb. 20, wherein the girls upset first-ranked Pisgah for a tournament title, five days later Franklin’s varsity teams tipped off the state playoffs. In narrow losses to Hunter Huss and High Point Central, both squads ended successful winter campaigns.
Women
In ending the regular season with a 17-9 record, Franklin’s women entered the playoffs as the 3A West’s 20th-ranked team. The Panthers traveled to Gastonia for a first-round game with #13 Hunter Huss Feb. 25.
Senior McKenna Plemmons was Franklin’s Swiss army knife in the first, sinking a trio of 3-pointers and drawing an offensive foul on the other end. Bristol Brooks added four points, two assists and a steal to end the quarter up 18-13.
Layla Maloy heated up in the second, racking up seven points and a steal. Brooks and Plemmons added five and six points respectively to take a 36-27 lead at the half.
Huss responded in kind after the break, scoring the first nine points of the third to tie the game. Despite tough defense from Aubrey Haley throughout, the Huskies ended the quarter up 51-46. Franklin never regained their momentum, and fell 69-62.
“They played really well; they really did. I’m proud of them,” said head coach Scott Hartbarger after the game. “We started out a little slow, turned the ball over three or four straight times and got down 6-0, but then we went on a run, and I think we surprised them – I think we shocked them with how well we were playing. We were up nine at halftime, and they came out and I think we turned it over four straight times, and they outscored us 24-10 in the third. We were trying to battle back, battle back; to start the fourth we were down six points, and could never quite catch up or get closer than that.”
As underdogs on the road versus a talented Husky team, Franklin did what they’ve done all season, punching above their weight to give Huss nearly all they could handle. In a year which fans weren’t sure what to expect from the young Panther team, Hartbarger credited his players for outperforming expectations.
“The effort and the determination and the will to win with those girls was just phenomenal. I was so proud of them,” he said. “I was proud of our seniors. they stayed with it, they helped our young ones grow this year and get better, so that just leaves us next year with a lot of experience, a lot of people returning. We did have a fairly young team, but we will be more experienced next year and looking forward to another great year.”
While Plemmons, Haley, Payton Baty and Jozy Dehart will graduate this May, Franklin should retain a strong young core next year. After taking roughly a month off, the team will be right back to work later this spring.
“We always give them off until after spring break, and then the ones who don’t play a spring sport will be in the gym two days a week,” said Hartbarger. “Then we’ll up it to three days a week, and then June will be a full schedule. We’ll have FCA [Fellowship of Christian Athletes] Camp and we’ll do our camp here, and then hopefully we’ll do one more big camp, maybe a UNCA [University of North Carolina Asheville], a Gardner-Webb, something like that.”
Men
In ending the regular season with a 21-5 record, Franklin’s men entered the playoffs as the 13th-ranked team in the 3A West. With their female counterparts in Gastonia, the Panther men hosted #20 High Point Central in their own first-round game.
Will Rauers shot out of the gate in the first, racking up seven points, an assist and two deflections. High Point nearly matched the Panthers point-for-point, ending the quarter down just 12-11.
Max McClure turned red-hot in the second, scoring 13 of Franklin’s 16 points. Both teams stayed neck-and-neck throughout the quarter, ending the half tied 28-28.
High Point came out firing after the break, scoring 19 points in the third. Rauers tried to keep pace with four points and an assist, but Franklin ended the quarter down 47-37.
Franklin attempted a comeback in the fourth, getting seven points from Noah Brannon and six from Peyton Hervey. Despite twice cutting their deficit to five, Franklin ultimately fell 67-60.
“For the most part, I thought the kids played well. They shared the basketball, and I thought we had some big moments,” said longtime head coach Doug Plemmons after the game. “They [High Point Central] had a pretty big third quarter. I think they kind of figured out our defense and we had to switch defenses, and it took us a while to adjust to that.”
“And then toward the end – of course you can always second-guess yourself – but toward the end we switched to a straight man-to-man defense, extended it full court, and caused them a lot of problems, and we were able to fight ourselves right back into the ballgame. I think with about two minutes to go we had cut the lead down to five, so in that respect I’m proud of the kids for fighting back and for giving extra effort even when they were tired. A lot of them had played major minutes, but still found a way to dig down and find some extra energy and work ourselves back into the ballgame and give ourselves a chance toward the end.”
In a talented Bison team with 11 players over six feet tall, Franklin faced a different challenge than most teams in the mountains present, with High Point controlling the glass throughout the night. While the result was technically an upset on paper, Plemmons said his team deserved to be considered among 3A’s best.
“Playoffs are kind of bittersweet. It’s kind of the high school version of March Madness – you earn yourself the right to play in the playoffs, then you get your seeding, and sometimes the seedings hold true; sometimes they don’t,” said Plemmons. “A lot of them can be misleading – a team can come from a very, very strong area or a strong conference and have kind of a mediocre record, and all of a sudden you find out that that has nothing to do with how good they are, and has everything to do with how good the teams they’re playing against during the season are, and it goes both ways. But I’m proud of the guys. I’m proud of the fact that they were able to play themselves into the playoffs. I think that record-wise there’s no denying that they’ve had a really good year. 21-6 is a mark that’s very high – if you go back through the years and the records, that’s a very high win total for a Franklin team.”
With their third 20-win season of the last four years, Plemmons credited his team for another strong campaign, especially Max McClure for his physical, unselfish play on a team loaded with offensive talent. While they’ll lose McClure (the program’s all-time leading scorer with 1,497 points), Brannon, Braylen Dezarn, Brennan Cabe and Tristan Gibbs to graduation this May, Plemmons said the team should have no shortage of talent next year.
“There’ll be a gap to fill as there is every year, but we have 10 kids returning, and several of them have really good varsity experience,” said Plemmons. “And then you have a championship JV team that’s going to move up some really quality kids to blend in, and so I see no reason why there should be a drop-off.”