By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
In each of the last three seasons, Diamond’s girls basketball team advanced to the championship game of its Gem City Classic. And three straight years, the Wildcats finished in second place.
Diamond can finally celebrate now, after the Wildcats hung on against Miller Saturday night for a 47-41 victory in a rematch of last year’s championship.
“It’s always a battle with Miller,” Diamond coach Marty Atnip said. “We’ve had close games last year, played them in the championship and they got us. One of our goals this year was to not come up short again. We have some goals throughout the season, and we wanted to cross this goal off the list first.”
Saturday’s title tilt was an early treat for southwest Missouri basketball fans, with two teams that went a combined 47-11 last season and won district championships. They’re now a combined 7-1 this season.
The host Wildcats jumped out to a 27-19 lead by halftime and had a nine-point advantage entering the fourth quarter before the Cardinals made a game of it down the stretch.
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It was a 37-28 game after three quarters, and Miller went into the fourth after scoring just four points in the final five-plus minutes of the third. But the Cardinals opened the final period with a 3-pointer from Ashlynn Helton to make it 37-31, and then Loghann Leivan added another triple to make it a one-possession game.
Leivan later cut it to two with another 3-pointer, and the visitors finally tied it at 41 on a jumper by Rachel Nunez with 3:15 remaining. But the Cardinals didn’t score again.
Diamond’s Grace Frazier made two free throws with 1:57 on the clock that proved the difference, and she and Lauren Turner combined for four more in the final minute to help ice it. The Wildcats, in fact, made just one field goal in the fourth quarter but made 8 of 10 free throws to earn the win.
“You’ve got to convert those big opportunities whether it be from the free throw line or those big buckets,” Atwood said. “It was a battle of attrition. Both teams are good defensively and both have a lot of athletes and good players. I’m not going to take anything away from Miller, they’re a very solid team and we feel very fortunate and very blessed we were able to pull out the victory tonight.”
“You’ve got to grind sometimes,” he said. “You’ve got to get big stops and make big buckets, whether from the free throw line or getting those buckets that aren’t easy coming down the stretch. We made enough plays to hold them off but they made a good, valiant comeback. We had the nine-point lead and they hit some big shots to get back in the game. When they tied it we could have pressed but we stayed composed and played with a lot of poise down the stretch. I’ve got a lot of good players with a lot of experience, a lot of these seniors started as freshmen so that experience pays off after you’ve been in so many battles. That experience and poise we showed tonight was big.”
Frazier scored a game-high 25 points, including 12 in the second quarter. Kabrie Parmley added nine, Turner scored seven, Makaylynn Lafferty scored four and Miley Lafferty had two.
Miller’s Leivan scored 24 points and had 15 in the second half. Ashlynn Helton scored six, Rachel Nunez had five, Kendall Neely had four and Alexis Bailey scored two.
“Any adversity where you battle back and have a chance is good for us,” Miller coach Ryan White said. “We were in foul trouble the entire game with two starters on the bench the whole game. For us to have a chance there at the end says a lot about our team and their grittiness to fight back.”
