By Mike London
Salisbury Post

GRANITE QUARRY — Basketball seasons are long, tough grinds that can turn around at unlikely times and in unlikely places.

That was the case for East Rowan’s girls basketball team in 2024-25, a team that played a pivotal game in Tyro, of all places, that no one could have seen coming.

It was a special season for East that meant South Piedmont Conference Coach of the Year and Rowan County Coach of the Year accolades for East Rowan’s fourth-year coach Bri Johnson Evans, a young coach who was starring on the court for North Iredell High and Catawba College not long ago.

Evans is East’s first Rowan County Coach of the Year for girls basketball since 2014 when Danielle Porter was honored. Evans is only the third East winner since 2000 in a county that has seen Salisbury (6), West Rowan (2) and Carson (1) combine for nine state titles.

But it was finally East’s turn. East had the seniors. It was East’s season.

With just about every other girls program in the county experiencing challenging times, East went 21-7, won the Dale’s Sporting Goods Sam Moir Classic for the first time since 2014, played in the South Piedmont Conference Tournament championship game and comfortably qualified for the 3A state playoffs after a couple of seasons of near misses.

“It was quite a ride,” Evans said. “I’m excited about being coach of the year, but the team success is what I’m most excited about. Coaching awards come from having a good team with supportive assistants and good players who had individual success.”

East lost the third game of the season, in overtime, at home, to Northwest Cabarrus. That was a crushing SPC defeat that carried over to the next game. Except for Kady Collins, who scored 16, the Mustangs didn’t show up at all and got blasted 57-35 at home by a Central Cabarrus squad that wasn’t exactly a steamroller.

At that point, East was 2-2, 1-2 in the SPC with two home losses, and didn’t appear to be headed anywhere except directly into a brick wall.

The next night, Dec. 11, the Mustangs took the bus to the sleepy town of Tyro, just across the Yadkin River from Rowan, to play the West Davidson Green Dragons, an average 2A team. It was a Wednesday, it was non-conference, and no one but parents, grandparents and boyfriends really cared, but that’s where the season turned around.

For a while, East was at least as bad at West Davidson as it was against Central Cabarrus, maybe worse, and trailed the Green Dragons by 13 points. East perked up a bit in the second quarter but was still down 10 at the half.

But important things happened in the second half. For one thing, Mary Church, who scored 29, decided she wasn’t going to let the Mustangs lose. Sadie Featherstone, who had averaged 1.5 points as a junior, scored 13 and emerged as a serious scorer for the first time. Lily Kluttz showed she could be cool in the clutch and made the free throws the Mustangs needed at the end. East probably should’ve been 2-3, but the Mustangs came home 3-2 and in a hopeful frame of mind.

That West Davidson game turned out to be the start of a 10-game winning streak that included three victories in the Christmas tournament. Church and Featherstone combined for 40 as East won the Moir championship game against Salisbury by 17. East held all three tournament opponents under 40 points.

“We discovered our identity, figured out who we were as a team during that time,” Evans said. “We were pretty good on defense and we could see that by playing really hard on defense, it led to easier offense. We scored over 70 points four times this season. This group had never scored like that.”

East had averaged 42 points per game in each of Evans’ first three seasons. This season, the Mustangs averaged 54.7 per game. That bump in scoring made a big difference.

SPC champ Robinson was very good, reached the fourth round of the 3A state  playoffs and beat the Mustangs three times.

But East got a payback win at Central Cabarrus, and after losing twice to Northwest Cabarrus, East beat the Trojans in the semifinals of the SPC Tournament. That was one of the most exciting and intense games of the season. Northwest held Church to 11 points, but eight different Mustangs scored and stellar team defense held the Trojans to 42 points. As far as team efforts and team wins go, that game defined East’s season. Evans squeezed every last drop from her team’s bench to win that one.

East had progressed from six to 11 to 12 wins in Evans’ first three seasons before jumping to 21 this time.

“We had a lot of the same players, but the mentality was totally different,” Evans said. “As far as being mentally tough, the difference this season and the previous years was night and day.”

Evans’ husband, Trey, who was a football star at Catawba, is one of her assistant coaches, along with former Mustang Caroline Houpe.

The Evans family is expecting an important roster addition in May — their first child.

There will be some great stories to tell the kid about Mom being Coach of the Year while she was waiting patiently for him to arrive.