Champs! — Part 1

ALBANY — It took Lewis Smith a minute, just a pause to let out his frustration.

Then he smiled, and started talking about just how much he appreciated his Westover girls basketball team, which won its second Region 1-AAA title in a row Friday night.

Westover hung on to beat Peach County for the second time in five days to win the title, 50-41, but only after Peach County had stormed back from a 23-point deficit.

“We squandered leads all year,” Smith said. “We can blow a 20-point lead faster than most folks can blow a four-point lead.”

Smith then stopped and hesitated, before adding: “They’re young. It’s part of their inexperience. We’ve got a great team. We just don’t know how to close games out, but it’s a real young team and we will learn.”

Well, at least they certainly know how to start a game.

Westover’s defense smothered Peach County, which had trouble shooting until the fourth quarter, and gradually built the 23-point lead. During one stretch in the second and third quarters, Peach made just 3 of 30 shots from the field. Westover’s defense, which has carried the Lady Patriots all year, held Peach to just four points in the second quarter and went to the half up 28-12.

“We were off. We were flat,” Peach County coach Maxine Cherry said. “We kept taking outside shots and missing. We got back in the game when we started taking inside shots.”

DyTeisha Dunson and Ieshia Young scored all of Westover’s points in the third quarter as the Lady Pats jumped out to a 37-14 lead with 3:47 left in the third.

Then came Peach County and its unrelenting pressure. Suddenly Westover couldn’t make a basket — because the Lady Pats couldn’t take a shot. Peach forced 11 turnovers down the stretch.

“We relaxed,” Smith said. “We thought the game was over, and they came at us and played hard. They had more intensity than we had at the end of the game.”

Peach County’s Bonnie McClendon led the comeback, scoring 12 of her 14 points in the second half, and McClendon’s drive with 2:12 left closed the gap to 44-38 to complete a 24-7 run.

Westover turned the ball over six times in a five-minute stretch in the fourth quarter in which the Lady Pats didn’t get a shot at the basket.

“We started playing defense,” Cherry said. “We realized we had to do something.”

Then Westover took a breath, regrouped and hung on as Dunson scored six points — four on free throws — during the final two minutes to close it out and hand Westover its second consecutive title.

“We just had to get our composure back,” said Dunson, who finished with 19 points, including 15 in the second half.

Young, who hit two 3s early to get Westover rolling, finished with 12 points — and an observation.

“We got complacent, because we had just beaten them Monday,” she said. “Be we really wanted the title, the second in a row.”

Westover has won 11 in a row and hasn’t lost since falling to Peach, 55-50, last month. The Lady Pats avenged that loss Monday, 56-46, to win the home court advantage in the region tournament — and it came in front of standing-room-only crowd Friday.

“We won the region title last year with six seniors, but to come back with this young group and win it means a lot,” Smith said. “We really do have a great team.”