The biggest girls basketball contest in recent years in Gray brought throngs of support from throughout Jones County last Tuesday, filling the JCHS Gymnasium close to its capacity.
And for a half, those fans saw the Lady Greyhounds stand toe-to-toe with Midtown, one of the state’s top teams, staying even with the Knights for most of the first half.
But the team that calls its campus in the heart Atlanta home ended up bringing a barrage of long-range shooting with it. After the Knights closed the first half on a 5-0 run to lead 22-19, Midtown ended up being nearly unstoppable from the outside, draining an astounding nine three pointers in the final two quarters to win 58-37. Midtown will play for a state title this week in the Macon Coliseum with the Lady Greyhounds’ best postseason showing in five years coming to a close with a 23-7 record.
“I don’t think anybody expected us to be where we are,” Lady Greyhounds head coach ChoRhonda Gwaltney-Harris said. “We started playing well at the end of the season and really got it going.”
Jones County fought tooth-and-nail early, being able to drive the lane and sustain an offensive rhythm through points in the paint. That included Jones County’s first lead late in the first quarter when Kamiyah Adams took the ball in for a layup.
With the score being within a possession on both sides, it gave the very partisan home crowd a lot to be energized about.
That impact was not lost along the JCHS bench that at times had trouble communicating due to the noise being made by fans.
“It was a packed house in here. Thank you, Jones County, for coming out here and supporting us. I don’t think we’ve had this kind of support all year long,” Gwaltney-Harris said. “Our kids really appreciated being able to play in this atmosphere.”
But as back and forth as the first half was, a 5-0 finish before halftime by the Knights ended up being a signal of what was to come with Jones County down 22-19 at the break. Midtown began the second half on a 9-3 run to lead 38-22 within the first three minutes of the third quarter.
Jones County did its best to try and prevent Midtown and its threepoint shooting from running away with the game, cutting the lead to 38-26 with 2:05 to go in the third. Back-to-back scores by Carlie Skinner and Amaris Ridgeway sought to keep the deficit within range late in the third, but a buzzer-beater by the Knights put them ahead 41-30 going to the fourth quarter, when Midtown needed less than a minute to go up by 15 points to slowly put the game away.
“That’s a good team.
They play disciplined.
They run their stuff until they find somebody, and they found somebody every time,” Gwaltney- Harris said. “They knocked down that three pointer, we were playing man, and they were still getting open, somehow.”
One of the Lady Greyhounds’ seniors, Skinner led Jones County with 11 points with two other seniors, Britley Johnson and Ridgeway adding six points.
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