Dougherty Lady Trojans stop Columbus to advance

ALBANY — The Dougherty Lady Trojans (14-11) advanced to the semi-finals of the region tournament Monday night and guaranteed their spot in the GHSA state playoffs next week with a 63-43 win over Columbus at Dougherty High School.

The Lady Trojans will now face crosstown rival Monroe (19-6) who is currently ranked No. 8 in Class AAA. But that didn’t bother Dougherty head coach Khadijah Ali Monday night.

“I am so proud of these girls,” she said after the game. “We punched our ticket to the state playoffs! These girls have played so hard the last few games without our two seniors and I am happy they get to keep going. It will be difficult going into the game against Monroe and into the state playoffs without our seniors, but this is the team for next year. All I have are freshmen and sophomores now. This is what we will have next season so we might as well throw them into the fire right now.”

The Lady Trojans lost senior Jacqueline Buchanan to an ACL injury and Charity Bellamy is sick. Neither one will be available for Wednesday’s game against Monroe.

Monday night, a three from Jayla Burns and another from D’Asia Simmons helped give the Lady Trojans an 8-0 lead when Columbus called time out. The Lady Blue Devils tried a full-court press to slow down the Lady Trojans but Simmons, Jatiana Chambers and Aniyah Jackson had little trouble running past the press early on. Dougherty led 22-7 after one and 37-19 at the half. Dougherty had a little more trouble getting through that press in the second half as the Lady Blue Devils created turnovers and got a couple of quick baskets. Columbus closed the lead to 12 points in the third before the Lady Trojans got things going again and ran away with the win.

Simmons led the scoring for the Lady Trojans with 18 points, Jatiana Chambers added 13 while wearing the number 42 jersey as a tribute to Buchanan, while Jackson and Grace Smith each put in 10 points.

Dougherty will travel to Columbus — Carver High School — for the semi-final match-up against Monroe Wednesday at 6 p.m. Thomasville will play Carver in the other semi-final game that will follow. The region championship game will be Friday at 7 p.m. at Carver.

Joe WhitfieldJoeWhitfield[email protected]