By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
For the first time in several years, the Diamond girls basketball team had to watch another school accept the championship trophy at the Golden City tournament.
The Jasper Eagles turned a 4-point lead into double digits in the third quarter and went on to win easily against a short-handed Wildcats squad with a final score of 56-36 on Saturday night. Jasper improved to 14-1 with the victory and notched its 12th win by double figures.
“The girls have the goal of winning the three tournaments we’re in and we accomplished that tonight,” Jasper coach Kent Anderegg said. “Our next goal is to win the conference and it’s a difficult conference so that’s what we’ll turn our eyes to now.”
Diamond, appearing in its fifth consecutive Golden City title game after winning the previous four, played without a handful of players due to illness. The Wildcats (6-10) had won back-to-back contests for the second time this season entering Saturday, and managed to keep things close for a half.
Kabrie Parmley scored 5 points in the first quarter and Lauren Turner scored 9 in the second for Diamond, but Jasper’s Crystal Smith was a force throughout and scored 11 in the first quarter. A Smith layup made it 12-3 and two Smith free throws made it 14-5 before Diamond rallied to cut the deficit to 4 after a 3-pointer by Jaylinn Starbuck.
Again the Eagles hiked their advantage to 9 points in the second quarter––a basket by Bailey Adams gave Jasper a 23-14 lead to about five minutes left in the half––and again the Wildcats fought their way back to a 25-21 score at the end of the period.
CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS OF THE GAME
Jasper started to put the game away in the third quarter. The Eagles scored the first 11 points––Smith had 5 and Emersyn Bass chipped in 4––and held the Wildcats scoreless for more than six minutes. Smith nailed a 3-pointer with 16 seconds remaining to make it a 41-25 game with just eight minutes left. Five different Eagles scored in the final frame to help seal it.
“We made a couple of changes defensively and put a little more emphasis on guarding (Lauren Turner),” Anderegg said. “She’s an amazing player and I think our press kind of clicked in the second half.
“Sometimes we struggled a little bit shooting it,” he said. “We dropped some 3’s in that third quarter, too, that made a difference. When we’re making our shots we’re really difficult to stop.”
Smith finished with a game-high 28 points for Jasper and Bass totaled 10 for the Eagles. Shiloh Storm notched 8 points, Chloe Storm and Bailey Adams each scored 4 and Natalie Storm finished with 2.
Jasper was a perfect 12 for 12 at the free throw line.
Diamond only played seven players in the game and was led in scoring by 13 from Parmley and 12 from Turner. Dawson Housh added 6, Starbuck scored 3 and Codi Sweet added 2.
“You’d obviously like to have everybody healthy and give yourself a better opportunity for sure,” Diamond coach Marty Atnip said. “I felt like we kind of wore down, they wore us down a little bit. They’re a good team, there’s a reason they’re 14-1 now. Tip your hat to the Jasper Eagles, they played well, and I felt like my team competed but we just came up short. They were just the better team tonight in this championship game.”
“I told them a lot of teams would like to have the opportunity to be in the championship five times and be a four-time champion,” Atnip said. “Nothing to hold your head down about, getting second place. We’ll continue to just keep our nose to the grindstone and keep working hard, hopefully get some people healthy and get where we are peaking at the right time around districts.”
All-Tournament Team
Liberal’s Taylor Swarnes was named tournament MVP after scoring 92 points to break the tournament record of 86 by Greenfield’s Marlie Wright in 2023. Joining Swarnes on the first team were Diamond’s Turner, Jasper’s Smith, Jasper’s Bass and Diamond’s Parmley. The all-tournament second team was Lockwood’s Asa Lasater, Lockwood’s Peyton Lasater, Dadeville’s Claire Mitchell, Greenfield’s Drew Miller and Everton’s Olivia Sartin.
