Lumpkin County girls extend win-streak to seven

DAWSONVILLE, GEORGIA - A big second half kept the Lumpkin County girls basketball team in its winning ways as a wire-to-wire 54-39 victory over neighboring rival Dawson County extended the Indians’ win-streak to seven on Friday night.

Yet, after witnessing his team’s dominance first hand, head coach David Dowse still felt his team could’ve played better.

“Credit to Dawson County, they played very well, schemed us well, played hard and executed, but I don’t think we played very well the whole game,” Dowse said.

Although never relinquishing the lead after junior Averie Jones scored the first basket of the game, Lumpkin was held to just 26 points in the first half and maintained only a five-point lead at the break. After starting the game on a 17-5 run, the Indians ended the half outscored 13-9 to let Dawson creep back into the game. Dawson’s Kirklyn Porter led the way for the Tigers, scoring 12 of the team’s 21 first half points to keep the contest close.

However, when the Indians returned to the floor, the game was gradually put out of reach.

Lumpkin went on to outpace the Tigers by 10 in the second half to add to its lead while holding Dawson to only 18 points the rest of the way. Much of that was due to tighter defense on Porter and her fellow shooters who were held to just a single made three pointer in the second half.

“We talked at halftime, I said ‘no more catch and shoot threes’ and Averie did a much better job in the second half,” Dowse said. “And Kate [Jackson] didn’t let their post score at all. Kate did a really good job.”

On offense, it was Mary Mullinax leading the way with a game-high 16 points, followed by Jones who scored 13. Porter was the high-scorer for Dawson with 12, all coming in the first half.

“We made some plays,” Dowse said. “Mary hit a big three, got a steal and got out in transition. Mary made some plays. Kate played a good second half and Maddie Lee came off the bench and hit some shots that I don’t think Dawson was counting on. We see it in practice so good for her, that was really big for us and she played good defense as well.”

The Tigers continued a strategy they’ve employed all season against the Indians, focusing their defensive prowess on Lumpkin’s four stars and leaving the fifth player on the floor at any given time open to do as they please.

“It’s what they’ve done for two games,” Dowse said. “That is their philosophy. Can your fifth man score?”

With the defense backed off and daring Lumpkin’s fifth player to shoot, Dowse decided to play right into their hand by also encouraging them to shoot. This gameplan backfired on Dawson early as Ciera Brooks knocked down a couple threes when given all that space. Later, freshman Maddie Lee was dared to do the same, making the Tiger defense pay repeatedly.

“The bottom line is you have to make the shot,” Dowse said. “If they’re not going to guard one of our kids, you’re playing four on five basketball and it’s really hard to score when you’re playing with four offensive players against five defensive players. So Ciera kind of carried us by knocking down a few in the first half and Maddie hit three in the second half.”

Dowse spoke highly of the freshman, who stepped up to knock down three big shots in the third quarter.

“I think for her confidence, it’s huge,” he said. “I certainly would like to have the other four contribute up to their ability at the same time and then we’d really have something clicking. We had bits and pieces with two or three of them pouring it in, but never had all five of them offensively giving us what we’re capable of. But Maddie did great which was good for her.”

And now with only one regular season game remaining, the path is clear. A victory over a highly ranked White County team next Friday would give Lumpkin an outright regular season region championship and top seed heading into the region tournament. The Indians could possibly still get the top seed in a tiebreak situation with a loss, however Dowse doesn’t want to put it to chance.

“We have to beat White County. If we want to be the one seed, we have to win Friday night,” he said. “If we win Friday night, we’re the one seed, we get a bye and an automatic bid to the state tournament and we can go from there. If we don’t come to play next Friday night and drop one, we’re going to be in some kind of three-way tiebreaker that would probably go to a coin flip and we could be as low as the three seed. We don’t want that.”