'We were just locked in': Garfield smothers Champion in sectional final girls basketball
GARRETTSVILLE — Garfield used strong defense and balanced scoring to defeat Champion 52-19 and capture a Division III sectional championship Saturday afternoon.
“It’s tough to beat somebody three times in the same season, so by no means was this going to be easy,” said Garfield coach Aaron Gilbert as he watched his players cut down the net. “I thought defensively we were just locked in. They have such good shooters and we had to be ready to go.”
The G-Men advanced to play Kirtland in a district semifinal at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Struthers High School.
In the second half, Garfield (21-2) held Champion (6-17) to one field goal and a total of five points.
Seniors Laura McCoy and Madeline Shirkey each scored 13 points and senior Nora Trent chipped in 10 for the winners.
Champion coach Mike Cole tipped his hat to the G-Men.
“This week of practice was so good,” said Cole. “I thought we were going to come out a little more solid, but we were shaky, and a lot of that has to do with them, just the ball pressure they put on us. We just had to be strong with the ball, and we weren’t today.”
Junior Kayla Haynie led Champion with 11 points, and classmate Isabella Meyer added four.
Garfield opened the game with an 8-0 run and expanded its lead to 25-4 midway through the second quarter before the Golden Flashes closed on a 10-2 spurt to make it 27-14 at halftime.
Gilbert said he thought his players lost focus in the last few minutes of the first half and encouraged them at halftime to “re-focus” on the task at hand.
“We do that at times where we get into these lulls,” Gilbert said. “It cost us against Brookfield, it cost us against Crestview, and we didn’t want it to cost us today. It was just about staying locked in and doing what we know that we’re capable of doing. I thought we really adjusted well to that in the second half.”
The G-Men started the second half on a 7-0 run with a 3-pointer by McCoy and two jump shots by Trent to go up 34-14, and Garfield led by at least 18 points the rest of the way.
Throughout the game, Gilbert could be heard urging his team to maintain a steady tempo by yelling instructions such as “patience,” and “don’t force.” Overall, he said his squad did a sound job maintaining a comfortable pace of play.
“We have a comfort speed, and if we get beyond that comfort speed we struggle a little bit,” he said. “I thought that we did a good job, [with] some senior leadership, of just being able to understand the situation. ... If we can milk an extra 30 or 40 seconds off the clock, that’s time that they don’t have the ball. That’s really our goal.”
Gilbert praised the play McCoy, Shirkey, and Trent.
“[Trent] has had a really consistent year for us," Gilbert said. "She’s just been solid. She’s a girl [who] just waited her time.
“Shirkey’s just been a model of consistency her whole career, and Laura [McCoy] just gets us focused and gets us back in our sets and allows us to do a lot of things.”
It was the third meeting of the season for the two Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference teams. Garfield won the other two 46-43 and 53-38.
“We knew it was going to be tough,” said Cole. “They have so much height and physicality and they were very intensive.”
This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Laura McCoy, Madeline Shirkey lead Garfield to sectional title
