Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Lady Cardinals Hold Off Clarksville Lady Panthers
FARMINGTON GIRLS TAKE NO. 3 SEED INTO STATE
MORRILTON — Farmington bounced back from a semifinal loss to Harrison Thursday with a 54-48 win over Clarksville to capture third place at the 4A North Regional girls basketball tournament Saturday.
Two weeks prior Harrison knocked off Farmington, 55-46, in the regular season finale at Cardinal Arena. The next week Farmington returned the favor beating Harrison 57-53 on its home court in the semifinal of the the District 4A-1 tournament, which the Lady Cardinals won.
Now Farmington is trying to do the same thing going into this week’s State 4A tournament at Magnolia. The Lady Cardinals tip off the tourney against Nashville No. 4 seed from the 4A South Wednesday at 1 p.m.
Coach Brad Johnson remains optimistic counting on the Lady Cardinals’ state tournament experience. Farmington advanced to the State 5A semifinals two seasons ago and reached the 5A State quarterfinals last season with many of the same players led by senior Madisyn Pense and junior Makenna Vanzant.
“I felt like down the stretch of the regular season we were really executing well. We had some situation where maybe shots didn’t fall like they normally do, but a lot of that stuff is easily corrected,” Brad Johnson said. “We can’t lose sight of the bigger picture. The beautiful thing about this group in general is they’re very mature. They’re very focused. They’ve kind of been down this path before. and they understand what it takes to win and a lot of that has to do with playing your best basketball at the right time.”
On Saturday, Clarksville presented a defensive challenge with 6-1 Emmaline Rieder and 6-4 K.K. Phillips. Both girls tower over Farmington’s lineup with the tallest Lady Cardinals, 5-11 Audrey Culpepper and 5-10 Tori Kersey, both of whom come off the bench. The Lady Panthers also have capable 3-point shooters so Farmington had to cover the whole court and try to deny passes into the post
where Clarksville had the size advantage.
Clarksville took a 13-9 first quarter lead on consecutive layups by Phillips, but the Lady Cardinals scored five straight points to begin the second quarter on Makenna Vanzant’s 3-pointer and a fast-break basket by Alexis Roach after a missed three by Clarksville.
“This time of year a lot of times it’s going to boil down to can you get teams to take lower-percentage shots? And then can you keep them from getting multiple opportunities on the offensive end?” Brad Johnson said. “That’s all about fundamentally defending as a unit and then fundamentally rebounding as a unit and making that a commitment.”
The lead changed hands twice more before Farmington’s defense keyed a 12-1 run giving the Lady Cardinals a 28-18 halftime lead. Madisyn Pense connected on a pair of 3-pointers and Farmington got putbacks from Kersey and Culpepper.
“That’s been something that we’ve harped on in practice. It’s been a real focal point for our kids. We’ve really dialed in on our filmwork and looking at things that we can do better and as coaches one thing we had to kind of look at is what are we best at defensively? When we’re playing our best defensively, what are the things that we’re doing?” Brad Johnson said.
Farmington scored the first six points of the third to take its biggest lead of the game, 36-20, forcing Clarksville to fight an uphill battle for the rest of the game. The Lady Cardinals led 41-30 going into the fourth and kept the margin around nine points until Clarksville made a three at the final buzzer.
FARMINGTON 54, CLARKSVILLE 48
Clarksville 13 5 12 18 — 48 Farmington 9 19 13 13 — 54 Clarksville (23-9): Individual scoring totals not available. Farmington (25-7): Madisyn Pense 5 0-1 14, Makenna Vanzant 3 5-6 13, Audrey Culpepper 4 0-2 11, Alexis Roach 3 1-4 7, Joelle Tidwell 2 1-2 5, Tori Kersey 2 0-0 4. Totals 19 7-15 54.
3-Point Goals — Clarksville 6, Farmington 8 (Pense 3, Culpepper 3, Vanzant 2).