Warren Central drops title bout to Honey Bees
Published 12:00 am Friday, February 12, 2010
GREENVILLE — Breanna Lewis spoiled the best-laid plans of the Warren Central Lady Vikes.
The All-State guard torched the Lady Vikes with 17 points in the final six minutes to lift the Greenville-Weston Honey Bees to the Division 4-6A Tournament title with a 48-37 win over Warren Central Thursday afternoon.
The win moves the Honey Bees (21-3) into a North State 6A satellite game in Greenville. Warren Central (17-9) must travel to the Horn Lake-Southaven winner Monday.
First-year WC coach Jackie Martin-Glass’ plan to use a zone and play a slow-paced game nearly derailed Lewis in front of her home crowd. The two teams were tied at 30 after three quarters.
“For three quarters it worked well and we played well. Then we went brain dead there in the fourth and got away from what we were doing right. For some reason, we wanted to fall back to the post instead of challenging Lewis. Once she got in her zone, it was tough.”
DeShaundra Eatmon hit a free throw seconds into the fourth quarter to give the Lady Vikes their last lead at 31-30. Lewis was then fouled on a 3-point attempt. She made all three free throws to set in motion her late-game heroics
With 5:4 left, Lewis made a 3-pointer from the corner after missing two previous attempts. WC couldn’t corner the rebound and Lewis’ third shot gave the Honey Bees a 36-33 lead.
Lewis would make three more 3-pointers over the next three minutes t put away the Lady Vikes. Her last 3-pointer came with 1:40 left to make it 45-35.
“They are to be commended for the game plan. They did a good job with it and Coach Glass had her team prepared.” said Greenville-Weston coach Curtis Stovall. “We wanted to make them extend their defense and we did that once Breanna got going.”
Warren Central opened the game in a zone and the plan worked. The Honey Bees missed their first six shots and trailed 6-1 and then later 10-5 before getting 3-pointers from Lewis and Shameka Jackson to go up 11-10. A putback by Ross gave WC a 12-11 lead after one quarter.
The Lady Vikes took their last lead of the first half on a 3-pointer from Sh’Qualla Neal to make it 18-16. Neal finished with 12 points and Ricille Davis also had 12 points and 10 rebounds for WC.
Contact Jeff Byrd at jbyrd@vicksburgpost