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Wildcat girls earn berth in state finals

Waterford’s Alli Kern (30) drives to the basket as Danville’s Vanessa Hawk defends in Saturday night’s regional championship game at Pickerington North High School. The defending state champion Lady Wildcats scored a 50-35 win to earn their third straight appearance in state’s final four. Photo by Mike Morrison.

PICKERINGTON — After losing four starters off of last years Division IV girls state championship team to graduation, few if any gave the Waterford Lady Wildcats a chance at returning to the state finals this season.

With Saturday night’s 50-35 win over the Danville Lady Blue Devils at Pickerington North High School, the Wildcats proved those nay-sayers wrong and kept themselves firmly in the hunt for back-to-back titles as they punched their ticket to Columbus for the third consecutive season.

Waterford juniors Alli Kern and Megan Ball combined for 29 points as the white and green grabbed an early lead and were never seriously threatened to improve their season mark to 24-3.

“It’s just amazing the maturity level that these girls have achieved the last two weeks of the season,” said Waterford head coach Jerry Close. “To graduate four, two who were 1,000 point scorers, our point guard and then the toughest kid we’ve got (senior Jillian McCutcheon) goes down with an injury in game six and to have a bullseye on their back all season, to make it back is just amazing.”

After scoring a 17-point victory over conference-rival Eastern at Jackson on Thursday night, the Wildcats quickly jumped in front against Danville and never trailed on the court on which they have now won three consecutive regional titles.

Junior point Hannah Duff got the scoring started with a short jumper before Ball’s three-point play made it 5-0.

Waterford managed to extend that lead to six at the end of the first quarter led by Ball’s eight points.

The lead reached double digits for the first time early in the second period on buckets by Ball and Hayley Duff as Waterford went on to out score Danville 6-3 in the second to take a 24-15 lead into the intermission.

The Wildcats totally dominated the boards in the opening half as they pulled down 20 rebounds compared to just six for the Devils.

“Coach (Close) told us before the game that they were hard on the offensive boards and told Megan (Ball) and I that we needed to get after it,” said Kern, who led all rebounders with 12 in the game. “We knew coming out that would be a big key in this game.”

Just as they did in the opening two quarters, Waterford came out strong in the third as a field goal by sophomore Rachael Adams proceeded four straight points by Kern as the lead swelled to 15 at 30-15.

Danville began to show some signs of life thanks to the hot hand of junior Lauren Mickey who canned back-to-back triples to spark a 10-2 Blue Devil run that cut the Wildcat lead to just seven late in the third quarter.

Ball came up with a huge play just before the end of the third period after making a turnover herself that gave the ball to Danvlle with a chance to cut the lead to just five heading to the final quarter.

After making an errant pass with 15 seconds to play, Ball redeemed herself by coming up with a turnover of her own when she intercepted a Danville pass and drove the length of the court to score to give Waterford a 34-25 lead as the buzzer sounded.

Kern opened the final eight minutes with a short jumper to expand the lead back to double digits before the pesky Lady Devils once again whittled the lead down to eight with five minutes to go in the game.

Waterford made 16-of-20 free throw attempts on the night including a pair by Adams and one by Hannah Duff to push the lead back to 11 before scoring eight more unanswered points to put away Danville for all intents and purposes.

Baskets by Kern and Adams pushed the lead to 15 before another Kern bucket off of a rebound and a strong drive to the hoop by Hayley Duff made it a 47-28 lead with less than two minutes to play.

Both Kern and Ball completed double-doubles for the Wildcats as Kern scored a game-high 15 points to go along with her dozen rebounds while Ball added 14 points and 10 boards.

Hayley Duff also reached double figures with 10 while Adams finished with eight points and eight rebounds.

“Its just unbelievable, There have been so many people who doubted us so we wanted to make a point,” said Ball. “I think we have worked hard enough that we deserved this.”

Close felt that the Wildcats overtime victory over South Webster last week in Jackson may have played a key role in his teams dominance the past two games.

“Probably the best thing that happened to us was the South Webster game,” said Close, whose team will square off against Jackson Center, who upset Minster 37-33 at 6 p.m. Thursday at The Jerome Schottenstein Center in Columbus. “We were 12 seconds from going home and we found a way to win but I think they understood that our season could be over so they have done what they had to do get it done.”

Danville, whose season comes to a close with a 20-7 record, was led in scoring by Cece Newbold with 10 while Jordan Elliott and Sydnee Wears added nine and eight points respectively.

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