Senior guard Payton Johnson finished her high school career at Peebles with a 24-point effort in the Lady Indians’ district tournament loss to South Point. (Photo by Mark Carpenter)
58-49 loss to South Point ends Peebles season
Peebles’ Angel Gray looks for a path to the basket during action from the Lady Indians’ district tourney loss to South Point on February 24. Gray scored 9 second-half points as the Peebles come-from-behind effort feel short. (Photo by Mark Carpenter)
By Mark Carpenter
People’s Defender
After dropping their final two regular season games and then bouncing back to win a Division III sectional title with a 45-31 win over Rock Hill, the #2 seeded Peebles Lady Indians were back in postseason action on Saturday, February 24 in the famous Waverly Downtown Gym, facing off with the #11 seeded South Point Pointers. The seeding would indicate Peebles as a heavy favorite, but tournament games aren’t won or lost on paper.
In Saturday’s district semi-final, the Lady Indians only led twice in the entire game as a fired up South Point squad controlled the action, building a 16-point lead that Peebles was able to cut to three but got no closer as the Pointers advanced to a district championship match up with North Adams via the 48-39 victory.
“I thought we played well but we just couldn’t get the ball in the basket,” said an emotional Coach Pell in her postgame radio interview. “We had a hard time defending South Point at times and they made shots when they needed to. The have size and speed and that combo is tough when they are playing well. We got on a roll and closed the gap, mainly with free throws, but we knew we’d have to shoot the ball well against their zone.”
“It was a bad day to have a bad day.”
The first Peebles lead came at the 4:44 mark of the first quarter when Abigail Smalley banked home a three-pointer to give her team a 5-2 advantage. That lead evaporated quickly as the Pointers went on a 10-0 run, their game strategy of penetrate and pound the ball inside working to perfection. With 1:37 left in the opening frame, Peebles’ Payton Johnson hit a shot jumper, got fouled, and hit the free throw for the three-point play that cut the South Point lead to 12-8 after one.
That Johnson three-point play shifted the momentum to the Lady Indians as they scored the first with points of the second quarter, all but on coming from Johnson, whose three-point bucket gave her squad a 16-12 advantage with five minutes left in the first half. But the game of momentum shifts continued as the Lady Indians didn’t score for the final five minutes of the half while the Pointers finished with a 8-0 run, all eight points coming from muscular junior Saratina Jackson. That run put South Point up 20-16 at the intermission.
The South Point run continued as the third quarter began, extending to an amazing 20 straight points after they tallied the first 12 of the third stanza. A lot of the third period damage was done by Pointers’ senior guard Camille Hall as the Pointers doubled up the Lady Indians 32-16 at the 3:35 mark. At that point, though, the momentum made another shift, this time towards the Lady Indians as Johnson decided to take matters in her own hands, only after Peebles had squandered an opportunity by missing five of six free throws.
With 3:05 left in the third period, a coast-to-coast Johnson score started a Peebles run as the Lady Indians ramped up the full court pressure and finished the quarter on a 9-0 spurt, the final six of those coming from Johnson at the free throw line.
The Peebles streak continued as the fourth quarter started, two free throws from Angel Gray and another Johnson score pulled the Lady Indians within 32-29 and brought a loud and boisterous Peebles crowd back to their feet. The Pointers finally broke their drought with back to back buckets to extend their lead back out to seven, before Gray scored on a stickback and then off a South Point turnover and the Lady Indians were back within 36-33.
Sadly, coach Pell’s squad faltered again as South Point went on a crucial 6-0 run to move ahead by nine with 2:30 to play. Over that final 2:30, the Lady Indians did all they could to erase the deficit but with the clock as their enemy, it just couldn’t be done. A 6-2 run from Johnson and Gray cut the South Point lead back to 43-39 with less than a minute to go, but the Pointers rallied to score the game’s final five, four of those free throws from Emma Saddler, and the final horn sounded on the Lady Indians’ season as South Point moved to the Division III championship game with the 48-39 win.
The Lady Indians ended their season with a 19-5 overall record and were led in scoring in their final game by senior guard Payton Johnson, who scored 24 points in her final game in the red and white, going 9 for 11 from the free throw line. Junior Angel Gray added 9 points, all in the second half. The Lady Indians shot just 25% from the field for the game.
The loss was the final Peebles game for seniors Johnson, Caydence Carroll and Rylee Barr.
“I can’t even put into words what Payton meant to our team,” said Coach Pell. “She just does everything and Caydence was our big girl in the middle and Rylee gives us a spark off the bench as the sixth man and a great defensive player, often guarding the best scorer on the other team, something that always doesn’t show up on the stat sheet.”
The victorious Pointers were led by 20 points from Camille Hall, with Saratina Jackson adding 15 and Emma Saddler 8. South Point improved to 14-8 overall.
South Point
12 8 12 16 —48
Peebles
8 8 9 14 —39
S. Point (48): Jackson 3 8-9 15, Ermalovich 0 1-2 1, Hall 9 1-3 20, Bradburn 1 0-0 2, Jones 1 0-0 2, Saddler 2 4-4 8, Team 16 14-18 48.
Peebles (39): R. Barr 0 0-2 0, Johnson 7 9-11 24, Smalley 1 0-0 3, Carroll 1 1-2 3, Gray 3 3-4 9, Team 12 13-19 39.
Three-Point Goals:
S. Point (2)- Jackson 1, Hall 1
Peebles (2)- Smalley 1, Johnson 1
