MOUNT ULLA— The West Rowan girls basketball team put on a show Tuesday night that won’t soon be forgotten.
Crisp passing, aggressive drives to the hoop and a baffling half-court trap paced the Falcons to an 89-56 victory in the first round of the Class 3A state playoffs against Burns. West ended the game with a 22-0 run and put five players in double-figure scoring to set a school record for most points ever in a game.
The previous mark of 84 points came in 1997 against Mount Pleasant (84-26)and 1993 against A.L. Brown (84-19).
“It was a very up-tempo game,”West head coach Angie Waddell said. “One of our games is up-tempo too, so I wanted us to push the ball.”
Falcon guards Hillary Hampton and Kristen McNeely did it with ease for much of the night. They flew past their defenders like the Bulldogs were standing still, racing in for uncontested layups time and again.
“I don’t know that Burns played help-side defense a lot, and we recognized that and used it to our advantage to take it to the hole,”Waddell said. “They’re very intelligent girls and they know what to do.”
When Burns’ post players stepped out to help on the Falcon guards, Hampton and McNeely shot pin-point passes to their open forwards underneath.
“Take it when you’re open, give it to somebody else if you’re not,”said West forward Danielle
Scearce, who led all scorers with 20 points. “I think we had it together pretty good tonight. Everybody was working together as a team, looking up, keeping their heads up.”
West (20-8), which will face Burns’ Southwestern Conference rival Forestview on Thursday night, trailed by five points in the first quarter before starting its offensive clinic.
Sara Pieper (10 points), scored underneath off a great feed from McNeely and Allison Moore came in off the bench and had two layups courtesy Pieper and Hampton. Hampton (16) then capped a 9-0 run on a nice cut to the hoop for yet another layup, giving West an 18-14 lead.
The Falcons’ trapping defense forced Burns into 14 first-half turnovers and sparked an 8-0 run in the second quarter. Scearce hit back-to-back jumpers from the same spot on the floor. Moore and McNeely ended with two more layups on the break to forge a 42-31 halftime lead.
“We haven’t faced too many teams that could match us in our quickness,”Burns head coach Reggie Hoyle said. “They were able to do that. They’ve got quick guards, good shooters. It’s hard to defend that.”
Burns (13-10) kept the game close through the third quarter, trailing by a dozen heading into the huge fourth quarter. It was 67-56 when “the run” started with 5:10 to play.
Seven different Falcons scored in the 22-0 hot streak. Pieper kicked it off with a drive to the hoop, Scearce, Natalie Jones and Jenny Sloop scored off layups and McNeely even got reserve center Mandy Massey into the scoring column with a behind-the-back pass for a layup.
Jones’ layup with 56 seconds to play broke the scoring mark before Massey hit a jumper and Ashley Dowdy drained a pair of free throws for good measure.
“If you play to protect the lead you’re going to get yourself in trouble,”Waddell said. “I told them to keep extending it. We’d see an opening, we’d take it.”
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NOTES: Waddell was especially pleased with key contributions from Moore and Sloop (10 points, 12 rebounds) off the bench. “That’s the key thing, when you sub somebody you want them to maintain the flow of the game and we did that,” Waddell said. … The win made for West’s third straight 20-win season and fifth in six years (Waddell went 15-12 in her first year in 1998). … The Falcons shot 47 percent from the floor (34-for-73) and a solid 72 percent from the foul line (21-for-29).
BURNS(56) — Greene 1, Sims, Harris 4, Lee 16, Lawrence 7, Sanders 5, Allison, Brown, Roberts 11, Allen, Saunders 6, Smith 6.
WEST ROWAN(89) — Peebles, Izze, Sloop 10, Moore 6, Dowdy 2, Jones 4, McNeely 11, Pieper 10, Hampton 16, Scearce 20, Wansley 6, Massey 4.
Burns 14 17 15 10 — 56
W. Rowan 16 26 16 31 — 89
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