Just call the Lady Greyhounds elite.
One state tournament ago, Jones County trudged off of its home floor victims of an upset in the second round of the season.
On Friday against Starr’s Mill, the Lady Greyhounds ensured that history did not repeat itself.
With the score deadlocked going into the final quarter, a 9-0 Jones County run ended up being just what was needed at the right time for the Lady Hounds as they knocked off the Panthers 51-45 to advance to the quarterfinal round of the state tournament, better known as the Elite 8.
“It’s big. This senior class has worked so hard to get back here.
They deserve this chance to fight for a championship,” Lady Greyhounds head coach Takeo Gray said. “It’s a great group. They worked their behinds off in the summer with our fall schedule.
We played a lot of top competition to help get back to this point.”
The win advanced JCHS to the quarterfinal round for the second time in three seasons, and Friday’s win came in front of the Lady Hounds’ fans in their home gym.
“Jones County has the best fans. The energy that we pulled from them, it helped us finish the game,” Gray said. “The girls fought and bonded together. Our bench stepped up big for us.”
Jones County found itself thrown back on its heels early, as Starr’s Mill’s inside play moved them toward an early lead, up 14-8 through a quarter. But on a night where Kamiyah Adams’ point total was a tick lower than some of her other outputs as the Panthers held her to 14 points, she put in the heavy lifting around the boards, helping to control play inside in addition to surpassing Chimere Jordan’s single-season school record for rebounds.
“Their post player, she was pretty good,” Gray said. “Kamiyah and Desirae Dumas, they got in there and worked their behinds off.”
The Panthers may have slowed down Adams, but they didn’t do the same when it came to the rest of Jones County’s lineup. Desirae Dumas scored 16 points alongside 17 from Aubrey Norris for the Lady Hounds, who held Starr’s Mill to four points in the second quarter for a 22-19 JCHS lead at halftime.
All of that paved the way to a back-and-forth third quarter and into the fourth, where the Panthers led 38-34. But the Lady Hounds, who got a combined 22 second-half points from Dumas and Norris, more than rose to the occasion in the fourth quarter as Norris began the game-shifting 7-0 run on a layup followed by Dumas draining a free throw.
“All the work we put in, it was all for this moment,” Gray said. “This group of girls, they are not jealous of each other. They all support each other.
“It does not matter what the moment is. They just want to win.”
That burst was added onto by an Adams bucket off an offensive rebound, two Liberty Pennamon shots from the charity stripe and a Norris three-pointer with 3:12 to play, adding up to a 44-38 JCHS lead.
Starr’s Mill, however, had some fight left, cutting the lead to two points with 58 seconds to go, down 45-43. That’s when Dumas extinguished any hopes of a Panthers comeback, sinking a crowd-jarring three-pointer to put the Lady Hounds up 48-43, sealing the win.
Jones County advanced to Friday’s second round after last Tuesday’s first-round 53-29 win against Westminster, a game in which the Lady Greyhounds led 20-4 through a quarter and were led by 17 points from Adams.
