The run that saw the Habersham Central High School Lady Raiders basketball team make a region championship and be able to host a state playoff game came to an end Tuesday night with a 58-29 loss to South Paulding High School.
HCHS (10-16) dropped into a 6-0 hole in the first two minutes of the game before freshman Karah Dean knocked down a 3-pointer to cut the deficit in half.
The first quarter ended with a 14-5 score and the Lady Raiders were never able to get back in the game.
Dean hit another pair of 3-pointers in the second quarter and finished the game with nine points.
Senior Sophie Bramlett led the Lady Raiders with 10 points, including a pair of 3-pointers in the fourth quarter.
The Lady Spartans (13-17) did their best to take senior Kyia Barrett out of the game and, for the most part, they were able to do that. Barrett finished the game with three points.
Overall, the South Paulding defense caused trouble for the Lady Raiders all night. The orange and blue had a tough time getting the ball inside the paint for layups and every shot seemed to be contested.
On top of not being able to get the ball inside, HCHS had problems finding the bottom of the net from anywhere.
The team finished 11-of-67 from the floor, making just 6-of-47 attempts beyond the 3-point line.
“Our numbers aren’t huge. We’re not a great shooting team,” Lady Raiders Head Coach Bill Bradley said. “We’ve had a couple of games where we’ve shot it well, but when they went to that big, wide zone, that’s just them saying ‘Kyia is not going to beat (us). You can lob it in here to your undersized posts, but we’re 6-1, 6-1, 6-foot, we’re OK.’”
While the height of the girls on the South Paulding roster did play a big factor in the game, there were a lot of breaks that didn’t fall the Lady Raiders’ way, especially when a player was trapped with the ball and decided to just get rid of it.
“We threw it out of bounds (in those situations) and they did about three or four of those and it ended up finding one of their teammates,” Bradley said. “Those are games where you make your breaks and we threw ours out of bounds … We didn’t make our breaks like we did during our good stretch.”
The Lady Spartans finished the game with three players in double digits and shot the ball well from the floor and the free throw line.
Lana VanDyke led South Paulding with 19 points and 10 rebounds. Chloe VanDyke and Lindsey Henry each had 11 points.
With the season coming to a close, Bradley reflected on the season.
“We went the first five games without Kyia, then the next five games of Kyia trying to get back into game shape and kids in the right spots trying to learn what their roles were going to be on a team with Kyia. Then we went on a pretty good run of wins and our record that last third of the season was still very good,” Bradley said. “Then, to do what we did in the region tournament last week, we went from having a good year, to me, to having a great year.
“To be able to play for a region championship with playing four ninth graders and giving them the experience to play in a region championship game and giving them the experience of playing in a state championship game is invaluable for your future,” he continued.
Having gotten the experience of playing in pressure situations in the last week, now it’s up to the freshmen and sophomores on the roster to decide how they’ll move forward.
“Obviously it was a great experience for these young kids,” Bradley said. “Now, what do they take out of that experience? How do they manage that experience? Do they say, ‘Well, the taste of winning wasn’t as valuable as the hard work I put in it’ or ‘I want to taste that more. I want to taste the winning of state tournament level,’ that means they go to work.
As cliche has it can sound sometimes, it really is on the players to determine how the momentum of this season carries into next season or if it does at all.
“When you get success, the new kids that walk into the dressing room don’t realize the hard work it took to get to that level. I think these kids learned some of that,” Bradley said. “In the first two weeks of practice, when they would die when they ran up and down the floor one time and I’m pushing them to go harder, they’re just thinking I’m a hard guy. Now those same kids are running hard.
“Next year, when we’ve got a new group of eighth graders (coming up), do we train them how it’s got to be or do we fall back on who we were at one time because we don’t have Kyia anymore and we don’t have a senior in the group next year,” he continued. “There may be other seniors that come out, but they haven’t grown up in this program. How do we manage the program? It’s about leadership and where do you find that from when you’ve got all ninth graders.”
With the obvious loss of Barrett as a leader on the floor and off, Bradley said that role will be the “big void” for next season.
“Hopefully maturity will take place and out of that group will rise a leader that will say, ‘Alright, we’re going to get this thing together,’” Bradley said. “You lose Kyia and you didn’t just lose a basketball player. You lost somebody that everybody looked to for ‘How do we do this?’ Kyia was the one (saying) ‘No, you don’t need to do that.’ ‘No, this is how we do this.’ ‘This is how we wear our uniform.’ Those kinds of things, you’re losing that. Who’s that going to be (next year)?”
After coaching Barrett for five years, Bradley said he’s excited for the relationship between coach and player to move to player and support system as she moves on to play for Anderson University.
“Our relationship has been coach-player for five years. Over five years, that develops because at first you’re coaching and now you’ve developed a relationship where, if I put in five things tomorrow at practice, Kyia will go out and implement them and call it in our offense,” Bradley said. “Now, I get to go be Kyia’s biggest cheerleader. I told her, as a freshman in college, it’s a tough year. You need somebody in your corner that’s not your mom and dad because your mom and dad are going to love you and they’re going to say, ‘You’re right, you’re right, you’re right.’
“But you need that friend that’s going to be honest with you, that guy that knows you. I can be that for her now,” he continued. “It’s a fun part of the relationship where, if she’s having a down day, she can call me or I can know how things are going for her and I can call her because I’ll keep up with her, particularly her freshman year.”
