Menu
Lady Bluejays rally past Twin Rivers
POPLAR BLUFF - For three quarters the Charleston Lady Bluejays showed no signs of life in Wednesday's Class 3 Sectional game against Twin Rivers.
But what many fans have come to realize happened once again. The fourth quarter belongs to Charleston standout Missy Whitney.
For the third straight game, Whitney put the team on her back and carried the Lady Bluejays to a 49-45 come-from-behind victory against the Lady Royals at Poplar Bluff High School.
Charleston (21-6) advances to the Class 4 Quarterfinal game at the Farmington Civic Center on Saturday where they will play Hancock (25-2) at 6:30 p.m.
"It's extremely huge for the entire community," said Charleston head coach Kelly Barnes. "Nobody expected us to come this far. We knew we had the talent, we just didn't know the girls would have the drive and the motivation to get there. And now I really feel like they do."
Whitney scored 17 of her 27 points in the fourth quarter, including nine straight at one point.
Charleston trailed by as much as 10 points in the third quarter and by as much as eight on two different occasions in the fourth.
Even Barnes was getting a little antsy of when Whitney would pick her game up.
"I was very nervous -- I guess I started to panic myself," said Barnes. "But for some reason it seems to come so natural to Missy to just take over."
It all began when Twin Rivers (21-8) was leading 35-27 after an Amanda Trout 3-pointer with a little under six minutes remaining.
Whitney connected on back-to-back shots from downtown and then was fouled on a shot from behind the arc, leading to three made free throws with 4:47 left.
All of a sudden, Charleston had taken their first lead since early in the first quarter at 36-35.
The teams exchanged leads three times after that until a Fleater Quinn steal and layup gave Charleston a 42-39 lead with 2:05 remaining.
The Lady Bluejays would never trail again.
Down 48-45 with nine seconds left, Twin Rivers had a chance to tie the game with a desperation 3-pointer. But standout guard Amanda Lance turned the ball over with six seconds remaining.
Whitney made 1-of-2 from the line to seal the victory with four seconds left.
Whitney was 9-of-11 from the free throw line in the fourth quarter and 11-of-13 in the game.
Lance led Twin Rivers with 26 points. No other player reached double figures.
"Lance was the one we were really concerned about when we came into this," said Barnes. "We really felt like we needed to stop her. So we had Miquel (McCleary) on her at the beginning of the game. I thought she covered Lance very well."
Behind Whitney, Charleston got 10 points out of 6-foot-2 Shytoria Davis before fouling out.
Charleston trailed 7-5 after one quarter and 21-16 at the half. The Lady Bluejays cut the lead to 21-20 right out of halftime, but Twin Rivers went on a 9-0 run to extend the lead to 30-20 with 2:45 left in the third.
Barnes said that her girls may have been a bit nervous in their first sectional game.
We don't usually play in front of a crowd this big -- we don't usually have a crowd half this size," said Barnes. I think that had a lot to do with it. But we always seem to have a slow start."