Considering that Carter Williams has led the Spotswood girls basketball team to the championship game in the previous two Daily Progress/NBC 29 Holiday Classics, it was a difficult task for her coach Chris Dodson. The plan coming in was to keep Williams quiet while her teammates did the heavy lifting early in the contest against the Miller School. And that’s exactly how nearly the entire first half played out.
But with two minutes until halftime, the Blazers sprung their trap and behind a pair of 3-pointers from Williams and went on an 11-0 run to seize a 9-point lead, something they would hold for the rest of the game in their 58-31 victory over the Mavericks in the tournament quarterfinals.
“(These two schools) know each other really well because we team up for AAU in the summer,” Dodson said. “So they know what we do and I thought we did a nice job of getting the ball to other people early and letting (Miller) forget about Carter.”
After facing a 6-0 deficit to start the game, Miller was able to chip away at the Spotswood lead behind the play of Ashley Bowles and Whitney Martin. With a little over two minutes until the break, the Mavericks were able to take a two-point lead. But from that point on, the game belonged to the Blazers.
“We just played aggressive defense,” Williams said of the run. “We made a couple of good passes and they just happened to fall in my hands. I made the shots when they counted, but I mean it could have been anybody that hit those threes.”
With a comfortable lead heading into the third quarter, Williams had her number called nearly twice as often as she did in the first two frames and made the most of shots. The senior led all scorers with 21 points and hit five 3-pointers.
Of course, to get their star senior the ball, the Blazers had to show they could be successful in the paint, and junior Brianna Mitchell’s dribble penetration was more than effective as she contributed 11 points of which almost all of came from inside the key.
After Bowles got a hot shooting hand in the first half, Spotswood spent their entire efforts on shutting the talented junior down while still keeping an eye on Martin. The two combined to score all but seven of their team’s 31 points with Bowles leading the Mavericks with 16 points.
“I thought that we played well in the first half,” said Miller coach James Braxton. “But they pressed us a bunch and forced turnovers.”
Braxton is hoping that this tournament will help his younger, less developed players blossom into third and fourth options to help out Bowles and Martin.
“We’re inexperienced right now when it comes to kids playing basketball,” Braxton said. “We need have another one or two people step up on the perimeter.”
Miller (4-2) will look to rebound against Culpeper today when the two tipoff at Albemarle High at 3 p.m.
Spotswood (4-1) will play against Western Albemarle at Albemarle today at 6:30 p.m.
