BASKETBALL: East Laurens girls put on full-court press, blow by Brantley County to reach quarterfinals

Anytime you ask East Laurens head coach Danielle Lowther what her team plans to focus on in its next few practices, the answer is always “defense.” 

Her reply was no different Friday night after a second-round playoff performance in which the Lady Falcons’ recent emphasis clearly paid off. The area of their game they’d spent a good bit of time polishing shined as brightly as it has all season in a 62-37 dismantling of Brantley County. 

Though no game can truly be won in just six minutes, this one was effectively over after their devastating 1-2-1-1 zone press fueled a run of 23 unanswered points to open the night.

“Our defense was on point,” Lowther said. “We’ve been practicing, and it looked really good those first few minutes of the game.” 

The Herons, after finding their footing roughly eight minutes in, would play some tough D of their own to prevent East Laurens from engaging its cruise control anywhere between there and the final buzzer, which turned out to be a winding, uphill road dotted with stop signs. 

But the Lady Falcons never let Brantley County gain much ground in their rearview mirror, and made it through the last three quarters with no problem to win comfortably, and advance to the state quarterfinals for a third-straight season. 

They held off on cranking up the full-court heat until the end of the first minute, by which point Eastside defenders had already come up with two steals, and rebounded a missed jumper, over a series of three half-court sets. 

The Lady Falcons, leading 3-0, finally turned it loose after a fast-break travel gave the ball over, and didn’t back off from there until halftime. 

Herons were forced to dribble or pass it between four East Laurens defenders who were spread out in a diamond pattern between the baseline and half court, trained to trap and squeeze ball-handlers into long passes that their deepest back-liner was waiting to pick off. 

Brantley County frequently turned it over as Lady Falcons got hands on the ball or jumped a pass before it left the backcourt, but its possessions that did manage to clear the timeline often ran into more trouble in the form of miscommunication, and pickpocket steals, on the other side. 

Jameria Bing, Garyunna Mitchell and Deanna Lowther each had field goals in the resulting wave of East Laurens scoring. Zahmaria Robinson joined in on the effort at the foul line, where the Lady Falcons were an impressive 9-of-12 in the first quarter. 

Their streak of consecutive points paused after 23 with about 90 seconds to go, as a 3-pointer finally got Brantley County on the scoreboard. 

East Laurens would add four more in the remaining time to lead 27-3 after a quarter. 

That kind of all-out pressure is tough to sustain for long stretches, and to the Lady Falcons’ credit, they stayed in it for another quarter. 

But they’d lose a few steps as a bit of weariness began to set in, and their offense also became a little disjointed. 

The Herons found some cracks and exploited them to start the second with eight unanswered points. East, meanwhile, stubbed its toe on several consecutive possessions before a Lowther timeout returned its game to the tracks. 

The Lady Falcons, still unflapped by the opposing rally with a lead of at least 16 all the way through, recovered score seven and finish the half on top 34-16. 

Brantley County, for most of the night, struggled on the offensive end. 

But the Herons were able to slow the second half down to a painful crawl with some full-court D of their own. And they continued challenging and trapping right up to a final possession with a second and a half left. 

East Laurens, with a set of Robinson free throws to reach 19 points in the last 30 seconds of the third quarter, just managed to clear the 30-point threshold required to shorten the fourth to six minutes, though the stop-and-start pace of play that seemed to pause every few seconds for a foul or jump ball still drew it out long past a point where the outcome still in question. 

The authoritative start notwithstanding, fatigue and the increasingly physical demeanor of the game past a lopsided first quarter turned it into a somewhat grinding win, and kept the Lady Falcons from feeling too satisfied with their performance. 

“I think we kind of let up a little bit, because we thought we had won the game, which we had,” Lowther said. “But we’ve still gotta keep our toughness. And I think for the most part, Brantley County stayed tough throughout the whole game, and then at the end, they got a little bit tougher.” 

Deanna Lowther had 18, Bing 17, Mitchell 15 and Robinson nine for the bulk of the East Laurens scoring. Each, along with DeAndrea Lowther, Alasia Wiggins, Miyah Smith and Amari Kellam, also had a hand in keeping up the early full-court pressure, which you can bet the Lady Falcons will continue to work on as they get ready to host No. 6 seed Bacon County Tuesday night. 

For Coach Lowther, the rundown of practice priorities for Sunday and Monday afternoon is again pretty simple one, with a goal of continuing to perfect that defensive weapon – which served as a pretty overwhelming knockout punch out of the gate in this one – right at the top. 

“Defense, and basically getting our girls ready to play another tough game,” she said.