Her Columbus High School girls basketball team was comfortably ahead, there were just more than five minutes left to play against Ridgeland, but Yvonne Hairston raced to an official and called a timeout.
“We had to make sure we settled down, because I knew they were going to make a run,” the Falcons coach said. “Basketball is a game of runs. We knew they were going to make a run, and we weren’t able to score, so we just had to call a timeout and say, hey, just take a breath right here. We’ve got this.”
And they did.
The Falcons followed that timeout with an 8-2 run that gave them their biggest lead of the game at 19 points, and they went on to a 45-32 win over the Titans in the second round of the MHSAA Class 5A tournament on Friday night at Columbus High School.
Ask Hairston who played well for the Falcons, and she starts with two players who combined for two points and an 0-for-4 night at the free throw line.
Yep, defense was the game, and the Falcons came to play against a team that won its tournament opener by 30 points three nights earlier..
“My bench came in and played big for me,” Hairston said. “Anna Verdell gave us some good minutes, and (Fredija Clark), she’s usually not a starter, but she started tonight and she had to guard number four all night, and she did a good job.”
Wearing No. 4 was Ridgeland’s Katelyn Brinkley. Brinkley managed just two field goals, none after halftime, despite wanting the ball on almost every possession.
“Number four is legit,” Hairston said.
After a sluggish first quarter, the Falcons clamped down hard, outscoring the Titans 15-4 during the second quarter. MaKhya Weatherspoon got the offense started, netting eight consecutive points bridging the first and second quarters after Columbus had scored just four points over the first 6:20.
Weatherspoon and Shania Givens each scored 14 points to lead the Falcons, while Makayla Rieves chipped in with nine.
Hairston didn’t allow herself to get too frustrated by the sluggish start.
“You get like that when you don’t know your opponent,” she said. “They were a lot bigger than I thought they were going to be, and they moved a lot better than I thought they were going to do.”
Facing a team that had several decent shooters, the Falcons made them look awful. The Titans missed several open shots, at least partly because they didn’t get that many of them.
“That’s one of the things we spend a lot of time on, our defense,” Hairston said. “We had to make sure we didn’t let them see some daylight.”
The lead ballooned to 19 at 41-22 with 3:08, at which point Columbus finally took its foot off of the gas a bit. The Titans made three long 3-pointers down the stretch to make the score look a bit better, but by that time it just didn’t matter.
“We did what we were supposed to,” Hairston said. “That’s a good team we beat. We’re just really excited to get the win.”
Columbus (21-4) has a few days to prepare for its quarterfinal game against Canton, the No. 3 seed out of Region 3. The Tigers (20-9) have won two road games in the tournament, defeating Forest Hill 44-39 on Tuesday night and Lafayette, the No. 1 seed out of Region 2, 50-48.
The Falcons and Tigers will meet Friday night in Columbus.
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