Lady Bulldogs use strong second half to take down Peaster
Feb. 2—PEASTER — After starting out relatively slow in the first half, the Millsap Lady Bulldogs exploded into the second half against the Peaster Lady Greyhounds on Friday night. Ultimately, Millsap turned a 25-14 halftime lead into a 48-26 victory through quality effort on defense and an effective offensive attack.
"Mental toughness is what I've seen," Lady Bulldogs head coach David Wooldridge said. "They handled adversity in the first half where we didn't play very well. We had a discussion about that at halftime, and they came out and gave effort on the defensive end. They got after it. When we do that, we're going to be hard to beat."
Senior guard Claire Ground got Millsap going with a 3-pointer at the 5:38 mark in the third quarter, and she followed up her triple with an old-fashioned three-point play less than a minute later to extend the Lady Bulldogs' lead to 31-14. Peaster senior post Halie McDaniel nailed two free throws with 2:49 left to cut the deficit to 31-18.
Despite Peaster's efforts, Millsap senior forward Claire Dale found the basket on a successful and-one with 47.3 seconds while Ground drained two free throws with less than two seconds left in the quarter to give the visiting Lady Bulldogs a 36-18 advantage entering the fourth quarter.
"We have bigs that play well, our guards are starting to shoot the ball better and Claire (Ground) and Morgan (Kimbrell) are shooting the ball with confidence," Wooldridge said. "We are playing inside-out and it's not a matter of 'if I don't touch the ball, then I'm not going to get to shoot.' We've gotten better at being ready for those shooting opportunities when the ball comes back out."
Dale opened up the fourth quarter with another three-point play as she alertly cut to the basket, gathered the pass from Ground and finished at the rim. After that, she banked in a short jumper in the painted area with 6:56 left to break the game open at 40-18.
"We've played together since sixth grade and all four seniors have played together for a long time, so we have good chemistry on the court," Ground said. "All four of us came back knowing this is our last year, and we've grown to realize we have to finish strong and together. It's been really exciting to see how things have grown because we weren't really sure about everything, but we've come a long way."
Peaster matched Millsap's point total after that point in the game with eight of their own, but ultimately could not rally against Millsap, who is seeded fourth in District 8-3A Region I.
"We played up. We've got three teams in our district that are ranked top-15 in the state," Wooldridge said. "We looked in the top-20, and we had played 10 of those teams this year. Win or lose, we learned that we've got to play hard all the time. If you take time off against good teams, that's what gets you beat."
The Lady Bulldogs (16-15, 8-5) will close out the regular season at 6:15 p.m. Tuesday at home against district-leading Brock. Meanwhile, the Lady 'Hounds' (9-22, 0-12) will play their last game of the season at 6:15 p.m. Tuesday at Breckenridge.
"I'm looking forward to redemption on senior night and for a playoff win," Ground said. "I've been on varsity four years, and we've made to bi-district all four years but we've lost the past three, so it would be really nice to get a gold ball."
