Thomas Sumter girls headed to 2A state title game
Lady Generals knock off Spartanburg Day 46-38 in semifinal round to advance
B.J. Reed’s final game as the varsity girls basketball head coach at Thomas Sumter Academy will be for the SCISA 2A state title.
The Lady Generals advanced to the championship game by beating Spartanburg Day 46-38 on Thursday at Sumter County Civic Center.
TSA, which improved to 13-9 on the season, will take on Hilton Head Christian on Saturday at 2 p.m. at the civic center for the state title. HHC advanced to the title game by beating Spartanburg Christian on Thursday.
Spartanburg Day ended its season with a 19-3 record.
“Playing great defense is why we’re here,” said Reed, who led TSA to three state titles as a player and will be trying to win her third in five tries as a coach on Saturday. “We’ve been very tenacious on defense in the last few games.”
The Lady Generals focused in on stopping the Lady Griffins guard duo of Lauren Lee and Brittany Mack. While Lee and Mack each scored 12 points, the TSA defense made it very difficult to get good looks throughout the game.
“The first thing you do is identify who the best players are,” said Reed, who decided this would be her last season as head coach several weeks ago. “They (Lee and Mack) are two of the best guards we’ve seen all season.”
Thomas Sumter had the trio of Lizzie Silvester, Aubrey Stoddard and Sydney Daniel doing most of the work in straight man-to-man defense on Lee and Mack.
“When it was guard on guard, we were just switching off,” Reed said. “When they tried to switch guard for a post player, we had the guard fight through. We just did an outstanding job defensively.”
The Lady Generals led 18-17 at halftime, forcing four straight Spartanburg Days and turning three of them into baskets to rally from a 14-11 deficit.
TSA got a basket from Lindsay Daniel to start the third quarter and go up 20-17. Lee hit a 3-point basket to tie the game and Mack got free in the paint to put the Lady Griffins up 22-20. Spartanburg Day was up 24-22 when Thomas Sumter ran off six straight points to go up 28-24.
The Lady Generals led 33-28 after three quarters. A basket by Karleigh Young, two free throws from Sydney Daniel and a Stoddard layup pushed the lead to 39-28 with 6:20 left in the game.
Spartanburg Day would not get any closer than the final margin of victory.
Stoddard led Thomas Sumter with 15, Sydney Daniel had 13, Lindsay Daniel 10 and Young eight.