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By Michael Cignoli (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
WALNUT GROVE — With three tiers supporting a giant basketball, the trophy the Miller girls basketball team received for winning the Walnut Grove Morris Brothers Holiday Classic was well over five feet tall — only slightly smaller than each of its six players who played in the title game.
Big as it was, the trophy was nowhere close to the size of the run the Cardinals used to earn it.
Miller held Walnut Grove, winners of the past two Class 1 state championships, to two field goals in a 13-minute stretch across parts of three quarters in a 47-37 win on Monday evening.
The top-seeded Tigers, who were playing in their home gym and ranked first among the state’s Class 1 teams, led 16-12 with 4:30 remaining in the second quarter — a modest four-point advantage that was, at that point, the largest lead either school held in a back-and-forth game.
Miller responded by scoring 28 of the game’s next 33 points, taking a 40-21 lead into the fourth.
The Tigers allowed 13 consecutive points before Makayla McVay’s 3-pointer beat the halftime buzzer, but the highlight-reel shot did little to affect the game’s momentum.The Cardinals came out of the locker room and outscored the hosts 15-2 in the third — and didn’t allow a single point in the first five-and-a-half minutes — en route to a statement win over a perennial state power.
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“They’re going to be going far in February and March,” Miller coach Hannah Wilkerson said of the Tigers. “Coming in here and beating a really good team like that is really huge for us.”
Miller junior Kaylee Helton led all scorers with 16 points, nine of which came during the fateful run, while Claudia Hadlock and Lili Merrick added 12 apiece as Miller avenged a trio of losses to the Tigers in the past three seasons. Those results, including a two-point defeat in the title game of last year’s edition of the Holiday Classic, were huge motivating factors for Miller on Monday.
“We knew we needed to come in, work hard and show them what we’re made of,” Helton said.
The result was a dominant defensive performance, as Miller took the lessons from a semifinal win over previously unbeaten Hollister and, for the most part, limited Walnut Grove to one shot per possession. Anything more than that would have allowed the Tigers to collect a rebound and dish it out to one of their 3-point sharpshooters like Faith Gilkey, Lauren Johnson or McVay.
“We limited their second chances, got some tips on the balls and got some fast-break layups,” Wilkerson said. “Playing a half-court game against Walnut Grove would have been really tough for us, so I felt like our defense really won that for us.”
Gilkey had 12 points to pace the Tigers, who were without Hall of Fame coach Rory Henry. Assistant coach Josh Harp, who led the team Monday, said the absence was due to an illness.
Johnson added nine, while Jaedyn Johnson and McVay each had six in the loss.
“Our girls got a little bit complacent there on the offensive end for two quarters, ” Harp said. “We started doing out OK, but then for whatever reason we just backed off and stopped trying to get to the rim and stopped shooting with confidence.”
Eight of Walnut Grove’s 13 field goals were 3-pointers, including three in a furious fourth-quarter rally that cut the deficit to seven with 1:09 to play. But the damage was already done, and the Tigers got no closer than that despite outsourcing the Cardinals 16-7 in the final frame.
“I think desperation kind of set in and our seniors woke up and took charge,” Harp said. “I just wish we’d played with that intensity the whole way through. Miller runs a tough zone, so it’s hard to get any sort of momentum going against it. They do it really well, but I thought that our girls rallied OK and really took control of it. I just wish it had been a little sooner.”
Would having Henry on the sidelines have made a difference? It’s hard to say.
“It’s just another round of adversity that our girls have had to rally with and deal with,” Harp said. “It’ll make us a tougher team. I don’t think the adversity is done for the year and the practice with it will certainly help us going forward.”
Results like this one can also only help Miller, which has its eyes set on a deep playoff run. Helton helped the Cardinals reach the Class 2 volleyball Final Four this fall, and the basketball Cardinals have already scored two wins over Class 5 Webb City and one over Class 4 Lamar.
Miller’s schedule has also included Kickapoo — the No. 2 team in Class 6 — and, now, a decisive victory over a team that is favored to win its third straight state championship.
“They’re going to only better us,” said Helton, who was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player. “We need to face point guards that are as good as Faith and posts that are as good as Lauren. We need to face the bigger teams to help us in the playoffs.”
