An eventful third quarter that included a six-point possession, three consecutive steals and layups and a paint-peeling, attention-getting timeout wake-up call from Notre Dame coach Wes Moore made the difference Friday for the Irish girls' basketball team.
Mired in a sluggish third quarter and down three despite a six-point three-second run from Morgan Cantrell, Moore challenged his team -- and almost everyone else within earshot all the way to Amnicola Highway -- to respond.
The Irish did, holding Tyner to four points over the final 10 minutes of a 45-38 win at the Best of Preps tournament at Chattanooga State.
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Crowds filled tables and the bar at Cornerstone Pub Thursday during a fundraising event for Special Olympics.
"I'm very happy with how they responded and thought they did a great job down the stretch," Moore said afterward. "I know they were tired, but I just thought they needed a little correcting."
The Irish (9-3) are without two of their top playmakers in Taelor Hill and Adia Colvin, so the rotating exchange of big plays passed across the entire roster.
There was Cantrell's six-point barrage -- she hit a 3-point shot as Tyner fouled away from the ball and converted a traditional three-point play on the inbounds pass -- to give Notre Dame a 27-26 lead midway through the third.
Notre Dame's Kelly Wittler (5) looks to pass against the Rams's Porchia Turner (54). The Notre Dame Lady Irish faced the Tyner Academy Rams in the first round of the Chattanooga Times Free Press Best of Preps Tournament hosted by Chattanooga State Community College.There was Allison Hoffer's stickback that became a three-point play to give the Irish the lead for good at 38-37 with 3:43 left to play.
And there was Annie Ripper's all-around good play that included 10 points, four rebounds and three steals.
"We have been a point-guard-by-committee team, but now we're kind of a playmaker-by-committee team, too," said Moore, whose team will face Baylor in a Best of Preps semifinal today at 4 p.m. at Chattanooga State. "We definitely have to get some offense from our defense."
For most of the first three quarters, Tyner (4-7) created scoring chances off turnovers. With Porchia Turner operating around the basket and Samantha Maffett finding success from the perimeter, Tyner was the aggressor and held a 34-31 lead with two minutes left in the third.
But the Irish rally and Tyner's struggles down the stretch combined to send the Lady Rams into a losers-bracket game against Signal Mountain at 10 this morning.
"We tried to draw some things up for some of our shooters, but we couldn't get anything to fall at the end," Tyner coach Katrich Williams said. "Sometimes, because we're so young, they get it in their mind when we're down that we're running out of time. They panic a little bit even though there's three minutes to play.
"But games like this and tournaments like this will only help us get better."
Cantrell had a game-high 16 points for the Irish, who were 10-of-14 from the foul line, including making six of their seven foul shots in the final four minutes of the game. Turner finished with 14 points and nine rebounds and Maffett had 15 points for the Lady Rams.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com