Westwood girls win GISA Class 2A basketball title

MACON — After watching Friday’s GISA Class 2A semifinal game that featured Brentwood and Crisp Academy, acting Westwood head coach Gail Lee and her team were aware of one fact.

“We were very confident that it was our game to win,” Lee said. “Brentwood is a very good team, but we felt that it was a great matchup for us.”

That Westwood feeling was right on, as the Wildcats outscored Brentwood 9-0 in the first two minutes of the game and never looked back as they cruised to a 56-32 win to capture a state championship at Mercer’s Hawkins Arena.

Gracie Pollock led the way with 13 points, while Karlie Jones added 11 points and 11 rebounds in the win.

“This just feels amazing, said Lee, who won all 14 games that she coached after head coach Derrick Harris was suspended for unspecified reasons, believed to involve GISA rules violations, following a 14-0 start. “We only have 10 players on the team, but our second five is as good as our first five and that allows us to wear teams down.

“It was great getting a win like this in the state championship game, especially against the team that beat us last year, and I don’t think I ever had to use a time out to settle our team down.”

Four different girls were responsible for those key first nine points. Abby Santos got it started with the first two points of the game, followed by a Jones basket, a Spurlock 3-pointer and a Brianna Thompson layup. That forced Brentwood to call a quick timeout, but that was not enough to slow down Westwood, which led 19-8 after the first quarter.

“It is always very important for us to jump out early because we really haven’t played from behind this year,” Lee said. “Once we get going, we can be pretty hard to slow down.”

There was no slowing down in the second quarter, as Westwood added to the lead. The Wildcats took their biggest lead of the first half late in the second quarter when Santos drilled her second 3-pointer of the quarter. Westwood led 31-13 at the half.

Any hopes of a Brentwood comeback ended in the first three minutes of the third quarter as Westwood opened the second half with a 10-0 run to take a 41-15 lead.

Westwood has only one senior on the team, McKenlee Coleman, so things are set up for the Wildcats to be in line for another state championship run next year.

“We lose one, but we don’t have any eighth graders that play basketball so right now it looks like we will only have nine on our roster for next year,” Lee said. “We feel like everything is laid out well for next year, and that was the plan. We are all very excited about the future of this team.”