Beach girls end Dougherty’s season

SAVANNAH — The Dougherty Lady Trojans have come a long way from winning just four games last season. Still, Friday night’s playoff loss was a bitter pill to swallow for head coach Khadijah Ali and her staff.

The Lady Trojans’ return to the Georgia High School Association Class AAA state basketball tournament was short-lived as Beach took a 61-33 victory, ending Dougherty’s season

The Lady Trojans fell behind 26-11 at the half after committing 15 turnovers. They ended the game with a total of 24 and Ali said they struggled with Beach’s full-court press.

“We just didn’t do a great job of breaking the press and we never really got into our half-court offense,” she said.

Ali said ordinarily the deficit itself wouldn’t have been a problem, but the fact that they were never able to get their footing prevented them from mounting a comeback.

“Playing from behind is not an issue for us, we’ve done it before, we just honestly struggled with their press the entire game,” she said. “We also had three starters in foul trouble in the first half. That combined with all the turnovers resulted in a 33-61 loss.”

Shy’Keria Williams was the lone Lady Trojan in double figures with 12 points.

Dougherty returns a significant portion of its roster, and Ali said she’s proud of what they’ve accomplished and they’ll get to work to build on it for next season.