Pinpointing the determining factors in the Sequatchie County girls’ 54-38 semifinal victory over Bledsoe County in the District 7-AA high school basketball tournament Friday night at Notre Dame was relatively easy. They were timeouts and free throws.
Sequatchie County (19-10) will play in tonight’s championship game scheduled to start at 7. The Lady Indians will take on regular-season champion Signal Mountain (23-7), which beat Notre Dame 64-30 in the other semifinal.
“We’ve got to score because they’re going to score some,” Sequatchie coach Ron Davis said of the Lady Eagles. “And we’ve got to take care of the ball. We’ve got three good guards. We feel like we can handle their press. But then our posts have got to score.”
Notre Dame (12-17) will face Bledsoe (8-20) in the consolation game at 4.
In boys’ semifinals, Chattanooga Christian defeated Signal Mountain 60-41 and Notre Dame beat Sequatchie County 62-40. Signal Mountain will play Sequatchie in today’s consolation game at 5:30, and Notre Dame will take on CCS (21-6) for the championship at 8:30.
All eight remaining girls’ and boys’ teams will advance to the Region 4 tournament.
The Sequatchie girls never trailed after Jenifer Tholken’s baseline jumper from the right side broke a tie at 7. The lead grew to 25-12 before the Lady Warriors’ Gracee Simmons made a three-point play and Carley Davis added a free throw, prompting a Lady Indians timeout. Then when they came back to the floor, they scored the next eight points.
Sequatchie led 35-22 at halftime but Bledsoe scored the first six points of the second half, which led to another Lady Indians timeout. Then an ensuing 16-5 run led to an 18-point lead, which was their largest.
“I didn’t say a lot,” Coach Davis said of his messages during the pivotal timeouts. “I just said, ‘Girls, we’ve got to score some points.’ Once we got some buckets, then we were able to control the tempo.”
He also noted that part of the game plan was to attack the basket with the hope of being able to draw some reaching fouls. The Lady Warriors had a 16-15 edge in field goals, but the Lady Indians made 20 of 31 free throws while Bledsoe made 5 of 13.
“We didn’t rebound the ball well,” Bledsoe coach Carlos Davis said. “We didn’t give ourselves enough second-chance opportunities, and we kept putting them on the free-throw line. Also, we weren’t as aggressive with the ball as we normally are.”
Jordan Smith paced Sequatchie with 24 points. Brittany Singleton contributed 13.
Lynnsey Keener’s 16 points topped the Lady Warriors.
Contact Kelley Smiddie at sports@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/KelleySmiddie.