After the winning the Class 4A State Championship a year ago, the Southwest DeKalb girls basketball team wanted show it was still a squad to be reckoned with. The Lady Panthers did that and more by getting their second consecutive victory in the state title game over previously undefeated and No. 1-ranked Fayette County, comfortably dispatching the Lady Tigers, 59-46, at the Arena at Gwinnett Center on Friday. “I think it kind of got to the kids that nobody was recognizing what they were doing, so they kind of had a chip on their shoulder,” said Southwest DeKalb head coach Kathy Walton. “The only way to prove it was [winning] here. We just knew that in order to be recognized we had to do it on this stage.”
After a 7-3 Fayette County run to end the first half cut a nine-point Lady Panther lead down to two, Southwest DeKalb started to pull away for good midway through the third quarter. A Jamesha Blake fast-break layup followed by a Chancie Dunn bucket and a pair of Kayla Lewis free throws pushed the Lady Panthers’ lead to 11 at 40-29 with 2:32 left in the period. “They’ve got a great team. They make great heroic plays,” Walton said about Fayette County. “They usually own the fourth quarter so we felt like we needed to have a lead so when they made that run we could sustain it.”
A Tessah Holt 3-pointer brought the Southwest DeKalb lead down to eight going into the final quarter, but the Lady Tigers could get no closer than six points. Much like they had done the first three quarters, Southwest DeKalb used its defense to harass Holt and keep Fayette County at bay. “We were on her from the opening tip to the last buzzer,” Walton said. “She’s a great player, she’s going to [the University of] Florida and she can take over a game and put the team on her back.”
“We play AAU together. I knew she was going to come out here hard, so we had to come out here harder,” Lewis said. “Our coach always tells us offense sells tickets, defense wins games and rebounding wins championships, so our goal today was just to stop them and crash the boards.”
The 5-6 Holt did manage to work her way to a game-high 17 points, while Lewis led Southwest DeKalb with 16. Also, Laquisha Lewis had 10 for the Lady Panthers. “They all did a great job,” Walton said of her team’s efforts. “I just have to really commend Jamesha Blake, she played great defense. Alondra Rivers, Kayla Lewis came up huge for us, made some great shots.”
The back-to-back state titles are the first two in the history of the Southwest DeKalb program and Walton feels that this second championship silences any doubters about who was the best in 4A this season. “All along I felt nobody was paying attention to us,” Walton said. “We started off a little slow because we lost some people, but we had people I knew could fill the gaps. It was just a matter of time. As the season went on we got better and better and better. We’re obviously the best team.”
The Lady Panthers, who beat Fayette County in the championship game last season, will graduate three senior starters in Kajuanna Rivers, Blake and Laquisha Lewis. Kayla Lewis and Alondra Rivers will return, however, and go for their third consecutive championship.
Butler can be reached at jbutler@scoreatl.com.
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