Mount de Sales comeback stuns Lady Hornets

From Staff Reports

An 11-0 second-half run and an 11-point fourth quarter lead

was still not enough to send the Westfield girls basketball team to its second

straight GISA AAA championship game.

Playing at Mercer University in Macon for the first time, it

was the Mt. de Sales Lady Cavaliers getting a buzzer-beating put-back from

Maggie Midkiff and five straight overtime free throws to complete the monster

comeback win 47-41. The Lady Hornets and Lady Cavs played for the fourth time

this season, splitting the series as new Region 2-AAA opponents.

Katlyn Moseley sank four 3-pointers to give her a team-high

16 points. None of it, however, came in the overtime session.

The only basket

in the extra four minutes went to point guard Callie Hammerle, who had all of

her nine points from halftime to the end. In her final Westfield hoops game,

forward Valerie McLure also scored nine.

The contest had no real offensive rhythm throughout the

first half, which ended with the Lady Hornets up 15-10. Moseley scored eight in

the second quarter, but Westfield’s foul shooting was already become an issue

for head coach Cass Cassell (5-for-10).

Defensively, the Lady Hornets blocked four of Mt. de Sales’

first-half shots, and the Lady Cavs only went to the free-throw line twice.

Moseley was also able to play through two quick fouls called in the first

period.

Forward Sydney Ledford began the third quarter registering

Westfield’s fifth block. It would be the Lady Cavs, however, building momentum

with a basket off a turnover and halfcourt execution that cut the lead down to

one. With two minutes gone, so was the advantage as another halfcourt basket

tied the game 16-16.

Oftentimes, though, its falling behind that can spark a

team, and that’s what it did to Cassell’s group (although his timeout talk also

may have done it). When Mt. de Sales took an 18-16 lead, Westfield proceeded to

score the final eight in the final two minutes of the third.

It started with Moseley’s 3-pointer on a break. MDS turned

the basketball over three times, and Hammerle scored four in a row. After

having no second-chance field goals, McLure’s third-chance runner made it 24-18

going into the fourth.

Everything seemed to point towards championship-game plans

when Moseley began the final quarter with a trey (11-0 run) and McKinley

Walton’s third-chance 3 fell in. Hammerle captured a loose basketball and upped

the lead to 11, 32-21, with 4:40 remaining.

Among the things that went wrong for Westfield were four

giveaways, three in the final two minutes. MDS scored six straight (32-27), and

the Lady Hornets did not have another field goal. At the 1:44-mark, the Lady

Cavs cashed in two takeaways for five in a row and 34-32.

The only free-throw Westfield had came at a bad spot also, a

1-and-1 front end at 55.4 seconds. MDS could not make a tying basket, and

Moseley made both her foul tosses with 20 seconds left.

In 10 of those seconds, the Lady Cavs got those points back,

and their biggest break came on a turnover at 6.9. Their top scorer for the

game, Midkiff, had her put-back forcing overtime. She finished with 14 points.

After going 11-for-19 at the line in four periods, Westfield

was 3-for-8 in OT. The Lady Cavs were even shakier at the start, 2-for-9, but

proceeded to sink its last five.

MDS led 42-38 when Hammerle scored her field goal. With less

than 25 seconds left, it was 44-41 when Chelsea Veal went end-to-end to earn a

game-sealing three-point play.

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