Lady Hornets break through Elite Eight barrier for first Final Four appearance since 2021

MACON — After five years of being stuck in the quarterfinals, Mason Nelson and the Westfield Lady Hornets (22-5) have finally broken (back) through the barrier and are on their way to the Final Four with a 50-35 victory over John Milledge Academy (12-17) on Friday at First Presbyterian Day.

This will be Westfield’s first appearance in the Final Four since 2021, the same year the Lady Hornets made it to the state championship game before ultimately losing to Southland Academy 29-22.

“Man, it’s just been huge,” Nelson said. “We’ve got great girls, we’ve got great leaders on this team that have just been working really, really hard all year. And they have just been bound and determined to make sure that they didn’t get stopped at this point again.”

Daelyn Sumner, Kate Lane, Mary Blake Brannen, Kate Hardy and Issy Dehem — all seniors — now have four Elite 8 appearances. But this will be their first time beyond that point.

“That’s just been a big hangup with us since they’ve been up here,” Nelson said of the quarterfinals. “But they were just bound and determined that this wasn’t going to happen this year. I knew it at the end of practice yesterday that I could see it in there eyes. They were going to do everything in their power to not let that happen. I felt a calmness about me coming into today because of that, so it made it a lot easier on me.”

Westfield had some important contributions from their non-seniors, too, junior Mollie Gunningham in particular.

Gunningham had a team-high 17 points and drove the boat on both ends on the floor for big stretches of the game.

She took the brunt of the offensive load when Mary Blake Brannen came out early in the second quarter. She constantly banged around the interior and navigated the defense well to get shots at the basket or draw a foul.

On defense she stepped out to the perimeter and rotated between players while also helping in the paint.

At one point Nelson asked to a clearly winded Cunningham, ‘Are you okay?’ She simply nodded and continue to plug away in a 15-point playoff win.

“Man, her intensity. She just plays one speed — and that’s full speed the entire game when she’s in,” Nelson said. “You can tell when she has to come out because she is exhausted. Because she literally only knows one speed.”

“That’s what I can count on from her every single game, no matter what. Whether she’s scoring or playing great defense, I’m going to get that intensity level from her every time she steps on the floor.”

A 7-0 run at the end of the first quarter separated the Lady Hornets essentially for good. The Lady Trojans came within seven about halfway through the second, but it was a comfortable double-digit margin most of the way.

It could have been much larger, had Westfield not missed 15 of their 22 free throws (31%). That’s not a new issue for the Lady Hornets, but it didn’t stop their relentless attack of the basket for 32 minutes.

“The missed free throws, that’s a work-in-progress for us all year, that’s kind of been a sour spot right now for us,” Nelson said. “But we’ve continued to work on those every day.”

“Attacking the basket, we a made a point [to],” She continued. “We went back and watched all the film, and the last time that we played them we shot 18 threes and we had a bad quarter where we didn’t score until the late second half of the quarter. It was because we were shooting too many jump shots…So we made a point to tell them, you gotta attack. Don’t settle for the outside shot unless you’re [kicking it out] wide open. So that was a big, big point of emphasis since the last time we played them.”

UP NEXT

Westfield will be matched up with two-seed Terrell Academy, who beat Dominion Christian 64-36 in the game before the Lady Hornets’, on Feb. 25 at 3 p.m. at Columbus State University.