By T. Scott Boatright
Eighth-seeded Choudrant had a chance late. But ninth-seeded Anacoco got more chances and made the most of them.
It all came down to rebounding and second-chance opportunities, and that was the advantage the taller Lady Indians used to hold on for a 51-48 win over the Lady Aggies in second-round action of the Class B girls basketball playoffs Monday night inside the CHS Gym.
In a game that stayed tight from start to finish, Anacoco forced Choudrant to foul late and then connected on enough of their free throws to earn the three-point win in a game that seemed more like a chess match the final four minutes than the previous 20 minutes of play.
That furious finish began with a Choudrant layup by senior Reese Brown that knotted the contest at 47-47 with 3:52 remaining.
It took more than three minutes and timeouts by both teams before the Lady Indians finally added points to the scoreboard on a pair of made free throws by Ava Davis to put Anacoco on top 49-47 with 49.1 seconds left on the clock.
Choudrant’s Brown added a free throw of her own with 37.9 seconds remaining to make it a one-point game and Choudrant got another chance shortly after making a steal but getting called on a charging foul on the other end.
Anacoco added another free throw with 8.9 seconds remaining to push its lead to 50-48, but after CHS coach Brandy Roberson called her final timeout with 5.5 seconds left on the clock, the Lady Aggies failed to handle the halfcourt inbounds pass and had to foul Davis, who made the second of her two free throw attempts with 2.7 seconds remaining for Anacoco’s final point of the game.
“We have a sideline play called ‘Aggie’ and it’s just a screen down and Sadie (Jones) pops out and we hit the corner,” Roberson said. “Normally Reese flashes to the rim but we really just wanted her to flash the defender’s face right there to hit the three. Kami (Young) didn’t get in formation because her man came back and it kind of threw everybody off. We kind of freaked out there for a second and I was out of timeouts. I originally wanted to do our down-screen and up but we were afraid we weren’t going to be able to have time to screen and cut out.”
The Lady Indians took advantage of a height advantage, especially in the form of sophomore Emma Hyatt, who scored a game-high 17 points playing in the post.
“I think we played amazing defense, but (Anacoco) definitely got a lot of second-chance points and shot a lot of 3s, so there were a lot of long rebounds, and we just weren’t in position for that.,” Roberson said. “And then (Hyatt) can score inside. I knew with them playing four out (offensively) we needed to front her from over the top and with a backside helper, but when that happens, we have a really bad mismatch for the rebound on the inside, and then it puts us out of position.
“And that happened a lot tonight. But I didn’t know how else to guard her and she was really good. They’d get it in to her or over the top (to her) and she just grabbed it and scored it. But I do think we played amazingly on defense on the perimeter. I thought we did a really good job of getting over those screens on the handoff and keeping our hands in their face.”
Brown led Choudrant with 15 points while Hannah Bryan added 14 and Jones chipped in with 11.
“Hannah played the game of her life tonight,” Roberson said. “She played awesome on both ends.”
After the contest, Roberson was thankful to her seniors who played their last high school hoops games — Brown, Jones, Alyssa Bell and Piper Jackson.
“I just told them thank you for everything they’ve done for the program — their sacrifices, their discipline, their leadership. They may not see all of it, the benefit of all of it, but they’re the main reason we had the season we had.”
Roberson also pointed out the future her team has with a trio of sophomores who have now experienced a pair of competitive playoff games the past two seasons in Bryan, Young and Kat Hernandez.
“They’re performing and they play the style I like to play, which is fast,” Roberson said. “A lot of people don’t like to play fast and like to sit back in a zone, but then in the playoffs that’s what you see. Everybody’s pressing you, everybody’s physical. And they handle that pretty well. I have a few freshmen coming in that I think can play that style, too.
“So, we’re just going to keep hopefully adding some depth on the bench, move people in and out and try to run everybody down. I thought we did a pretty good job of that tonight. We had to move back to halfcourt tonight because Anacoco is really fast, but we adjusted quickly and obviously did what we needed to do to win it, but it just didn’t happen that way.”
