By Mark Carpenter-
After meeting in the championship game of the 2018 Holiday Classic, the North Adams Lady Devils and the Peebles Lady Indians got together for the second time on Thursday, Jan. 31, this time at Peebles High School, and the result was the same. In that Classic final, the Lady Devils Devils won by 11, 40-29, and on Thursday night, they repeated the act, again winning by 11 as a second-half surge fueled them to a 57-46 triumph.
The Lady Devils didn’t grab their first lead in Thursday night’s win until less than a minute remained in the first half but they used that and a 12-0 third quarter run to pull away from the home team and claim the Southern Hills Athletic Conference victory.
At the outset, it looked like the Lady Indians were going to be exacting revenge as they blasted out of the gate with the game’s first nine points, scoring on their first four possessions and forcing North Adams head coach Rob Davis to use a timeout just two minutes in.
“Peebles came out ready to play and we just didn’t match their intensity early,” said Coach Davis after the win. “They just outplayed us all around early in the game.”
“Peebles has a nice ball club, but I thought that tonight we did a better job of controlling the tempo and handled their press.”
Whatever Davis said sank in as the Lady Devils came out of that short break on a 6-0 run, which became a 9-2 run when senior Grace McDowell drilled a three-pointer from the wing to cut the Peebles lead to 11-9. Two free throws by Lilly Gray pushed the home team’s lead back to four but a triple from the top of the key by Braylie Jones made it 13-12 and a baseline jumper by Gray ended the first quarter scoring with Peebles on top 15-12.
The two teams spend most of the second period exchanging baskets until North Adams’ Marah Call, who has been giving Coach Davis some really solid minutes off the bench, hit a three-pointer that tied the game at 23 apiece. After a pair of Jacey Justice free throws gave the advantage back to the Lady Indians, the visiting Lady Devils then shifted the entire momentum of the game in the final 1:52 of the first half, going on a 7-0 run that included another three-pointer by Call that gave them their first lead of the game and going into the halftime break now in front 30-25, a lead they would not relinquish.
“Marah has really been playing well for us and she gave us another spark tonight,” said Coach Davis. “I tell them often that it takes all of our players to make this work.”
After beginning the third stanza with another Jones trey on their first possession, the Lady Devils led by eight but back to back buckets by Justice and Kylie Sims sliced the lead in half, before the North Adams five decided to take care of business. The Lady Devils scored the final 12 points of the third quarter, getting three-pointers from Mary Sonner and Karissa Buttelwerth to break the game open, leading 47-31 as the final quarter began.
Even facing the double digit deficit, the Lady Indians displayed some early fourth quarter fire, going on an 8-1 run to cut the North Adams lead down to 50-41, but that was as close as they’d get as the Lady Devils pushed the lead back to double figures, getting all 10 fourth quarter points on free throws, and held off the home team to post their second “W” of the year over the Lady Indians, final score 57-46.
In the win, their 14th of the season against five losses, the Lady Devils were led in scoring by two players in double figures, DeLaney Harper with 12 and Braylie Jones with 11. Mary Sonner added 9, Wylie Shipley 8, and Marah Call and Karissa Buttelwerth 6 apiece for the winners.
Even with the loss that dropped them at the time to 13-5 on the year, the Lady Indians still find themselves just one win away from clinching the small school division of the SHAC. On Thursday night, they were led by Jacey Justice’s 21 points, with Lilly Gray chipping in 12 and Kylie Sims 6. The Peebles girls got back on the winning track on Saturday, Feb. 2 with a 53-44 home win over Federal Hocking to improve to 14-5 overall.
North Adams
12 18 17 10 —57
Peebles
15 10 6 15 —46
N. Adams (57): Sonner 3 2-3 9, Shipley 3 2-2 8, Buttelwerth 1 3-4 6, Jones 3 3-4 11, Call 2 0-0 6, McDowell 2 0-0 5, Harper 4 4-4 12, Team 18 14-17 57.
Peebles (46): Justice 8 4-4 21, Beekman 1 0-0 2, Toller 1 3-4 5, Gray 5 2-2 12, Sime 3 0-0 6, Team 18 9-10 46.
Three-Point Goals:
N. Adams (7)- Sonner 1, Buttelwerth 1, Jones 2, Call 2, McDowell 1
Peebles (1)- Justice 1
