Lady Cardinals get early scare, advance

BLYTHEVILLE — It took a while for Farmington to resemble the team its coach is used to seeing Thursday afternoon, but the Lady Cardinals snapped back once they got going.

Jenna Lawrence scored 18 of her game-high 24 points in the second half to power Farmington to a convincing 74-41 victory over Arkadelphia in the second round of the Class 4A girls state tournament at Chickasaw Arena.

Marin Adams and Kaycee McCumber each had 13 points, and Hannah Moss added 8 for the Lady Cardinals (34-1), who ran their winning streak to 24 games and won their 18th consecutive by at least 17 points.

Yet, Farmington had a tough time shedding a Lady Badgers team that showed no fear.

Arkadelphia (20-10), which got 13 points from Liyah Smith, didn’t buckle under the Lady Cardinals’ pressure in the first half and stayed with them throughout the opening 16 minutes of play. The Lady Badgers managed to grab a 25-24 lead with 1:24 remaining in the second quarter following a free throw from Taylor Aultman before a stick-back from McCumber seven seconds later started a 6-0 run to close out the half for Farmington.

“I’ve got to give a lot of credit to Arkadelphia, I’ve got to because they rolled out and played extremely hard,” Farmington Coach Brad Johnson said. “They got themselves to the rim, got to the free-throw line and broke our pressure. As far as that goes, we knew [pressure] wouldn’t really bother them, but we decided to do it anyway. And then, we couldn’t make shots, either, so it was tough.”

All of that changed for Farmington after halftime.

Farmington hit seven of its first 11 field goals of the third quarter and parlayed that into a 17-3 run. Lawrence had eight points during the burst, including an up-andunder basket that extended her team’s advantage to 47-30.

The Lady Cardinals took a 53-36 lead into the final quarter and used a 14-2 run at the start to essentially put an end to the Lady Badgers’ season.

“I thought we settled in a little bit in the second half,” Johnson said. “The ball started to move, shots started to drop. We made a couple of changes defensively just to try to slow [ Arkadelphia] down a little bit. Once we started doing that, we looked a little more like ourselves.

“We had to get that first one out of the way though because it’s always the toughest one.”

MORRILTON 41, CLINTON 40

Johnna Brockman’s putback basket with seven seconds left in the game put Morrilton (29-4) up to stay as it escaped to advance to the semifinals.

Cheyanne Kemp had 24 points, while Brockman ended with nine points for the Lady Devils Dogs, who led 39-36 with less than two minutes remaining. But Clinton (25-7) roared back and later took the lead on a three-point play from Sydney Standridge with 38.6 seconds remaining. She nearly won the game following Brockman’s bucket, but her running one-hander bounced around the rim and out at the buzzer.

Standridge had 13 points, Abigail Parks scored 11 and Reese McDonald tallied 9 points for the Lady Yellowjackets.