South Georgia Tech ends Darton’s season

ALBANY —The Darton Lady Cavaliers saw their impressive season come to an end Saturday afternoon as they fell to South Georgia Tech 82-74 in the NJCAA Region 17 Tournament championship game at the Cavalier Arena.

“We fought, it was just their day … These are both good teams, it was just their day to play better,” Darton head coach Lea Henry said.

The Lady Jets, Taquandra Mike in particular, got off to a scorching start in the first half. Mike was unconscious from behind the arc, knocking down 8 of 11 threes in the first half alone.

South Georgia Tech almost shot better from behind the 3-point line than the free throw line in the first, finishing 10 of 14 from deep and 3 of 4 from the charity stripe. Their hot-shooting put the Lady Cavs in a position they hadn’t found themselves in all season — a 22-point deficit at the half.

“I thought South Georgia Tech played extremely well offensively and it was hard to get anybody to slow Mike down,” Henry said. “She hit like eight 3-pointers in a row and they [South GA Tech] were tough. So, I thought that’s really what hurt us. We didn’t respond offensively like we needed to.”

She added that she was proud of her team’s energy and execution in the second half. It was that energy that caused two steals which led to a 6-0 run to cut the lead to 20.

Then, Armbrister knocked down three 3-pointers to make it a 13-point game. Darton got baskets from B’Kiya Webb and Shae Fleullen and suddenly it was a nine-point game with 6:19 to play. At that point, Henry said she thought the game could be theirs.

“I thought we might could pull it out,” she said. “That’s what we’ve done these last few games when we were behind. We found ways to pull it out, but we just didn’t have enough. They kept making plays.”

The Lady Jets would respond. Molly Brown knocked down a three as the shot clock expired to push the lead back to double-digits and South Georgia Tech held on to win the region championship as well as earn a bid to the national tournament.

Armbrister finished with a game-high 31 points, while Fleullen finished with 14. In a season where Henry was able to record her 400^th career victory and 100^th win as Darton’s head coach, she said they’ll have a lot of positive things to look back upon.

“I’m so proud of this team … We accomplished a lot,” she said. “When you win the regular season, that’s 18 games. It’s not a three game tournament. I’m real proud of what we accomplished with a short bench and losing players. So it’s a lot to look back on and feel good about.”

She also takes solace in the fact that she’ll have a strong squad ready to go next season.

“We’re obviously gonna miss Shanae, B’Kiya and Jeslynn [Mahone], but we’re having a really good recruiting year,” she said. “We’ve got some freshmen coming back, so we’ll start thinking about that in about a month.”