BLUFF CITY, Tenn. – A twist of an ankle ended up being a twist of fate the Sullivan East girls basketball squad couldn’t overcome.
Star senior point guard Megan Addison wasn’t able to return from a badly sprained ankle she suffered in Monday’s district tournament championship game loss and the Three Rivers Conference champion Patriots were bounced out of the Region 1-AA quarterfinals on their home floor Friday with a 76-63 defeat to Chuckey-Doak.
Chuckey-Doak coach Beth Frye began her post-game comments by immediately acknowledging the impact of Addison’s absence.
“They’re without their point guard; it makes a huge difference and we understand that,” Frye said. “They’re a great team and it was very unfortunate that they don’t have her. I know it would be different if they did.”
X-rays on Monday night showed no break after Addison went down early in the district final and she was initially hopeful she’d be able to recover in time to play Friday. The sprain, however, proved to be a severe one, and although Addison suited up Friday, she still sported a large walking boot over her injured ankle that prevented her from being able to take the floor.
People are also reading…
“Obviously,” said East coach Allan Aubrey, “we missed Megan.”
After a turnover-plagued first quarter, the Patriots (23-10) managed to hold their own on the offensive end for most of the night even without Addison, but the Black Knights (17-13) shredded East’s trademark pressure defense throughout the evening.
“I’m not real pleased with the way we played defense,” Aubrey said. “That’s not the way we practiced; that’s not the way we played most of the season.
“We played good defense all week long in practice. I don’t have any explanation other than maybe we felt the pressure more on defense than we did on offense because we missed our assignments. We talked about playing inside-out and we talked about blocking out and we obviously didn’t do those things.”
Chuckey-Doak put up 25 points in the first quarter alone to establish a double-digit lead and the Black Knights went on to put in a whopping 33 field goals – all 2-pointers – as they time and time again got down the court for easy buckets.
“We talked about that we were going to play to win and not play to lose,” said Frye, who saw the Black Knights advance to the regional semis for just the second time in the past five seasons. “They were just very focused. I was very proud of the effort.”
Brittany Ramsey had 25 points on 12 buckets and a free throw to lead the Black Knights, who also got 20 points from Erica Lamb.
East’s best chance at getting back in the game came at the end of the second quarter as the Patriots ended the period with a flurry of points in the final 75 seconds for a 10-0 run to cut Chuckey-Doak’s lead down to just 37-34 at the break.
Chuckey-Doak’s Kassidy Holloway, however, started the third quarter by easily getting to the rim for a quick layup and the Black Knights had their lead back up to 10 points by the midpoint of the period.
“We had it rolling,” Aubrey said. “And then we were ready to come out in the second half and then the first possession we did not play defense to what we talked about exactly in the locker room. We didn’t do it and that let them right back off the hook.”
The Patriots got as close as six points with 3:02 still to play, but never mounted a final push as they suffered a double-digit home loss in the regional quarterfinals for the second time in three years.
Despite the continual breakdowns, Aubrey said he never seriously considered pulling back the pressure defense.
“We knew if we’d just stand around, they were going to throw it over our heads,” he said. “We had to pressure them; we had to try to tire them out and force turnovers. We were so close so many times and we just didn’t give that extra effort to go get the ball.
“I think if we get out of the press we’re going to lose 58 to whatever instead of what we lost. We just didn’t do what we’re supposed to do in our presses. We just lost our minds in our presses.”
East connected on seven 3-pointers and all five starters reached double figures, but a 3-pointer by Tatum Gouge represented the only bench scoring.
Senior center Kait Nidiffer paced East with 14 points, Megan Ollis added 13, and Kayla Honaker, Kylee Wolfe and Alyssa Hare each scored 11.
The offensive output, though, wasn’t enough to prevent the Patriots from suffering back-to-back losses for the first time since starting the year 0-2 with a pair of Hall of Champions defeats in a Nov. 15 doubleheader.
As the final seconds ticked off, Addison could only bury her face in her warm-up pullover as, in one more cruel twist, she watched her superlative East career come to an end on her 18th birthday.
While Friday’s setback brought the season to an abrupt end, the senior class for East still put together a boatload of accomplishments.
During their four years in the program, the varsity won 98 games while earning East’s only two regional quarterfinal wins since 2001. This year’s undefeated run through the Three Rivers Conference in regular-season play also delivered the Patriots their first conference title in 16 seasons.
“I feel incredibly bad for our seniors,” Aubrey said. “They gave me their heart and soul. … It’s a real special group – all seven of them. There’s some of them that don’t play a whole lot, but they play tough in practices.”
While three senior starters will depart in Addison, Nidiffer and Hare, Aubrey said he’s fully confident in the returning talent to expect to host a regional quarterfinal for the fifth straight year next winter.
“We just have to have some of our younger kids mature a little bit because they’re good enough players and we can get back here, but we have to learn from this,” he said.