Sale Creek's Shelby Defore and South Pittsburg's Te'Aiysha Baker fight for a rebound.
photo by M.A. Locke
Being a post player in high school basketball is a thankless task, especially if you’re a player who relies on power like Sale Creek’s Shelby Defore. She spent Friday night getting bludgeoned by smaller South Pittsburg defenders in Sale Creek’s 52-49 Region 3-A playoff win while battling foul trouble all night.
And yet she persisted as the sun around which the Panthers orbit, picking up 10 points and 12 boards, and creating countless rebounding opportunities and scoring chances through her presence alone.
She had to watch the last few minutes from the sideline, but saw her team pull out a close victory after they almost blew a double-digit lead in the fourth.
“It can be difficult and sometimes I’m ready to fight somebody, but for the most part my teammates help me (stay calm),” Defore said. “Either Keilyn is wrapping her arm around me or Kayla is on the bench and ready to give me a hug and tell me to calm down.”
South Pitt started with two baskets in the first two minutes, with Daycla Mabry knifing across the face of the rim for a bucket. Panthers guard Molly Welch answered right back with a skyscraping floater on the baseline, running in from the three-point line and launching the moonball off one leg for two.
The game, like most Sale Creek games, was going to be decided in the paint. The Pirates boasted a front line of Sydney Boggs and Te’Aiysha Baker, while the Panthers rolled out Shelby Defore in the post, Keilyn Morgan at the four, and Kya Escobar off the bench. Every board was contested and the paint was usually packed with bodies.
Turnovers were another plague for the home team early in the game. The Pirates took a 11-8 lead when a high pass was picked off by Sydney Boggs. She dribbled downcourt, glanced to her right, and bounced a pass to Kianna Anderson for the textbook Fastbreak layup.
Sale Creek got some unexpected contributions from backup guard Malayna Osbourne. She played tenacious defense, and the baller with a knee brace also found time to knock in a first-quarter three from the right wing. Veteran forward Morgan then followed that up by spinning and pivoting through the paint to tie it up at 13 with a layup.
“I didn’t start Malayna and I thought maybe she’d be mad and get down, but she didn’t and I give kudos to her,” coach Cliff Morgan said. “She’s bought into this program, and she came off the bench and hit some huge shots for us.”
Escobar went hard in the paint during her shift to start the second quarter. After Morgan found it to be difficult to get a clean look off in the paint, Escobar cleaned up and lofted in a putback layup. Defensively, she was part of a unit that took advantage of (and was burdened by) the extremely physical nature of the game.
Just attempting a layup was fraught with danger, and a jump ball was only going to be called after one of the two players were strewn to the floor. Morgan took out her frustration from being chucked to the floor during one defensive possession by smacking a South Pitt shot into the ground.
South Pitt’s Kelstin Burnette got a little bit of revenge a minute later. She rejected a Sale Creek shot and then dribbled the ball quickly downcourt. The Pirates needed every advantage they could get, because for as fantastic as their defense was, the orange-and-black offense could barely get a shot to go down to start the second quarter.
Morgan had to use some Embiid-like footwork in the midpost just to be able to spin into the slightest sliver of space in the paint. Her contested hook shot just cleared the defender’s hands and dropped softly through the twine as Sale Creek took a 20-17 lead in the slugfest. That is when Keilyn Morgan took over.
She continued to be a pest around the rim, and finally drew a foul when she was hit by a couple of hard-playing Pirates. After she knocked down the free throws, Morgan found her groove. On the next possession, she grabbed the rebound and went coast to coast. Morgan’s last-minute burst gave the Panthers the 24-18 lead going into halftime.
South Pitt’s shifty guard Kianna Anderson showed her mastery of the off-ball game when she floated to the corner on the Pirates’ first possession and then punched in a triple. Morgan fired back with a baseline drive and lay-in, but then the lanky and athletic Cassie Andry used her agility to post up Welch and hit a hook right over her. After what the Sale Creek saw in the first half, the first minute of the second half was a shootout.
Morgan and Shelby Defore established themselves as interior dynamos in the third quarter too. After dealing with foul-trouble to start, Defore was well-rested and ready to go. She made space in the post for one layup, and then drew fouls on the very next possession to give Sale Creek a 32-25 lead. It didn’t matter if Defore was marked by one, two, three, four, or all five Pirates. She was going to be a presence on the glass.
Such attention often made life easier for teammates such as Escobar, who grabbed a rebound when several others were marking Defore. Escobar popped up and put back the layup for Sale Creek’s biggest lead of the game at 10 points. Escobar played a well-rounded game with seven boards and three steals off the bench.
“Escobar gives us a ton of energy, and their number four had five threes against us, and tonight Molly and Kya put the clamps on her,” coach Morgan said. “That was the difference in the ballgame.”
After South Pitt made a brief run to close the deficit, Welch and company took the lead back to double-digits when Defore threw a couple of girls out of the club and laid the ball in. South Pitt had no quit in them though, and Mabry answered this bigtime play with a smooth three pointer from the corner.
South Pitt’s comeback from down double-digits was propelled by guard Anderson. Even though the spacing often looked like something out of a pre-three point line game, she found a way to dribble and sidestep through cracks in the Panther defense. Her lefty layup with a little over two minutes left, as well as Mabry’s righty layup afterward, but the Sale Creek advantage to 49-47 with a minute and a half to play.
“I told the girls that South Pitt had a chance to put a run on us, and 10 turned to five, and five turned to one,” coach Morgan said. “But what we had that got us through it was senior leadership with Keilyn and Shelby and Molly.”
Welch hit a free throw, and then two FTs by Mabry made the score 50-49. The Panthers killed the clock for a while, but then a Panther stepped out of bounds to give South Pitt one more chance. A clean strip by Escobar got the ball back to Sale Creek with 30 seconds to go. South Pitt played the foul game, and Osbourne hit both to push it back to three. A high South Pitt pass forced by backcourt pressure (and a jump ball that went the Panthers way) gave the ball back to Sale Creek.
But a turnover by Sale Creek gifted the Pirates one more shot at life………and the Pirates missed it. And then missed the second chance. And then had the third blocked by Welch of all players. Sale Creek escaped with the win and will play Whitwell on Monday.
“In the end we just knew we had to do it for each other,” Defore said. “We didn’t want our season to be over. That was the bottom line.”
GIRLS SUMMARY
SOUTH PITT 13 05 12 19 – 49
SALE CREEK 13 11 16 12 – 52
SOUTH PITT (49) – Boggs 3, Cassie Andry 10, Cambria Mabry 3, Kianna Anderson 12, Burnette, Daycla Mabry 17, Baker 4
SALE CREEK (52) – Ellis 2, Malayna Osbourne 12, Holland, Welch 9, Kya Escobar 5, Presley Morgan, Keilyn Morgan 10, Shelby Defore 10
3-POINT GOALS: South Pitt 2 (D. Mabry 1, Anderson 1); Sale Creek 2 (Osbourne)
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