Lady Jackets began 5A playoffs Tuesday
Calhoun girls get past Hiram to win 7-5A Region tournament title
MTenney@CalhounTimes.com
The Calhoun High School girls basketball team is the 2023 Region 7-5A tournament champions.
Now the Lady Yellow Jackets are looking for more with the start of the GHSA 5A state playoffs, which began for the now 22-4 team Tuesday night when they hosted Conyers Heritage at The Hive. (Details of that game were not available at press time).
“The girls are determined,” Calhoun head coach Jaime Echols said. “They’re very determined. I know it felt great Friday night to win the Region championship. That was definitely one of our goals this season. We wanted to win that region championship and we did. But there wasn’t this real big celebration or the girls making a lot of noise or anything like that. I mean they were happy and they should have been, but I think they know that now what they’re really playing for is here, so I think they understand that this could be the start of something big for us if we play well enough.”
They put the finishing touches on clinching the league’s top seed going into the postseason last Friday night with a wild 43-41 win over Hiram on a pair of Saniah Dorsey free throws in the final seconds before a rocking crowd at The Hive.
“That is the best crowd I have ever been a part of and I can’t think Jacket Nation enough for the support they’ve shown the girls,” Echols said. “But to hear the gym get that loud was fun to be a part of.”
He said his father was there, wearing his Apple watch and the decibel level reached 90 on the device in the final minute of the game, which is equivalent to a rock concert or standing right next to a leaf blower.
Now they’re looking to make a lot more noise, starting with Tuesday’s Round of 32 contest against Heritage Conyers, which claimed the fourth-spot
CALHOUN,
Calhoun senior guard Britiya Curtis, with sophomore Saniah Dorsey behind her, shows off the Region 7-5A tournament championship trophy moments after the Yellow Jackets defeated Hiram, 43-41, Friday night at the Hive.
place, meaning the four seed to begin the playoffs, last Friday night with a 58-52 loss to Flowery Branch in the Region 8-5A tournament.
The Lady Patriots came into the game with a 14-12 record and went 5-7 in the 8-5A, but Echols said do not let the win-loss mark fool you.
“They’re a very good team,” he said. “They’ve got one player that’s very athletic, so we need to keep her in check if we can. But they like to play the same style that we do. They like to get up-and-down the floor and play fast. But they’re a good team and so we’ll need to be ready and be at our best.”
Echols said his team has to do two things to survive and advance to what they hope is a trip to West Georgia University next week for the Final Four.
“We’ve got to move the ball and move without the ball. That is one thing we’ve got to do,” he said. “Sometimes we tend to get a little stagnant on offense and we can’t do that this time of the year. We’ve got to move the basketball and when our girls don’t have the ball, they’ve got to move because when we’re executing at a high level, we’re getting the shot we want and we’ve got to continue to be able to do that.
“And we’ve got to rebound the basketball. I’m not saying we need to win the rebound battle in every game, but we’ve got to rebound the ball. We’re not that big. We don’t have a lot of size, but we can rebound the ball and we’ve done a good job with it this year. But this time of the year, we’ve got to be able to rebound.”
The win on Friday also gave them a Region championship trophy in a league that Echols says has steeled his team for what lies ahead.
“There’s no doubt that this Region has prepared us for the playoffs,” he said. “No doubt. The top five teams in this Region are all capable of beating the other five on any given night and I think that’s proven to be the case. But playing Hiram three times and Cartersville and Dalton and Cass twice has prepared us. And the way we loaded up our non-Region schedule, knowing what our Region would be, I think playing the teams we’ve faced has definitely gotten us ready for the level of competition we’ll see going forward.”
In their win over Hiram Friday, Calhoun took a 35-24 lead into the fourth quarter only to see Hiram come all the way back to tie the game at 41 with a minute to play before Dorsey calmly made two game-winning free throws with just 1.4 seconds showing.
“We know how to make things interesting, don’t we,” Echols said of the win. “I expected it to be that type of game, going all the way down to the end like it did. That’s the third time we’ve played them and they know all about us and we know all about them, so I expected a full 32-minute game. It was all about who could step up at the end and fortunately, we were able to do that.”
A Dorsey layup 15 second into the fourth period put them up 37-24, before the Hornets came charging back. They scored six straight to make it 37-30 before a Dorsey layup opened Calhoun’s lead back to 39-30 halfway through the quarter.
From there, the Lady Hornets rolled off seven in a row to get within a bucket at 39-37 with under three minutes showing.
Dorsey, who would score all of Calhoun’s points in the fourth quarter, made two foul shots with 2:31 left to put the lead back at 41-37 before Hiram got the next two baskets to tie the game with 60 ticks left.
The Hornets, with the shot clock off, had a chance to win, but missed
Calhoun sophomore Kat Atha puts up a shot against Hiram Friday in the Region 7-5A tournament finals at The Hive. their shot and were called for a foul on the rebound as Dorsey was knocked to the floor. She then converted the game-deciding free throws.
Dorsey led the team unofficially with 21 points and Curtis closed with 13 points.
With Dorsey scoring five of the team’s 10 first-quarter points, the Yellow Jackets got to a 10-6 lead after one period of play.
Calhoun’s lead was still two at 1715 in the second when they scored the final six points of the half for a 23-15 lead at the break.
Curtis hit a short shot in the lane and then went coast-to-cast with a nice crossover dribble at the foul line for a nice stop-and-pop 15-footer and then Dorsey made a layoff off a steal to end the 6-0 run.
Calhoun improved to 23-4 on the season and the winner of the Calhoun-Heritage game will play the winner of the Banneker-Cambridge winner Friday night in the Sweet 16.