According to Notre Dame coach Jason Hill, last year's Tennessee-Georgia girls' all-star basketball game involving 2016 graduates of area high schools was "a disaster."
The Georgia team had only five players show up and lost 102-43.
This year's matchup looked a lot better. While the Tennessee All-Stars won 70-53 Tuesday at Notre Dame, there was no mistaking the improvement of the event.
"What we did this year is we got a committee together and we handpicked 10 of what we felt were the best seniors (for each state) in the area," said Hill, who was the Tennessee head coach. "We sent out 10 invitations, and we got all 10 on the Georgia side and all 10 on the Tennessee side. We knew it would make for a much more competitive game, and that is what we wanted."
It wasn't so competitive early on, however, as Tennessee jumped ahead 15-2 and led 28-5 after one quarter of play. Georgia had a lot of ground to make up and did make a big dent in the deficit in the second quarter, cutting the gap to 37-25.
That was in large part due to Calhoun's Jana Johns, who finished the game with 10 points and five rebounds and was selected the Georgia MVP.
"(The second group) came out with a lot of energy and really boosted everybody up, and we were able to hit a couple layups, because that seemed to be our Achilles' heel," Georgia coach Meghan Downes said. "(Jana) was the main one out here hustling and fighting and getting the rebounds, knocking down big shots to pull us within 10."
But a connected Tennessee team continued its early success in the second half, hitting back-to-back 3-point baskets to go ahead 62-40 and going on to the 70-53 final margin.
Bradley Central's Halle Hughes attributed the success of the Tennessee team to the chemistry among teammates.
"We all played together; we kind of hit it off in practice. We brought our heads together," Hughes said after scoring 14 points for the winners and receiving the MVP award. "We had two practices, and to only have two, the chemistry was pretty cool."
Hill echoed that and noted that it is not something normally seen in an all-star setting.
"They were immediately bonding and hanging out, and that is a little rare," Hill said. "When you get a bunch of girls that are really good together, there is sometimes some competitiveness throughout their careers so it is hard to get them to be on the same team, but they absolutely did that this year."
Tennessee now leads the girls' all-star series with Georgia 10-4 and has won the last seven games.
But after the "disaster" of 2016, 2017 turned out quite a bit better on all sides.
Contact Tori McElhaney at sports@timesfreeepress.com.