‘My girls are fighters’: East Laurens claims school’s 1st championship in any sport

MACON — The East Laurens girls basketball team, which had let an 11-point lead in the third quarter slip away, closed the game with a 9-0 run in the final three minutes to pull away from Elbert County for a 63-55 victory in the GHSA Class A Division I championship game Friday at the Macon Coliseum.

The state title is the first for eighth-ranked East Laurens (28-4), which was making its first appearance in a championship game. It is also the first state title for the school in any sport. The Falcons lost their final game of the regular season, 61-59 against Northeast, but bounced back to win the Region 2-A Division I tournament and earn the No. 3 seed for the state playoffs.

No. 9 Elbert County (22-9) was seeking its second state title in five seasons.

Elbert County, which trailed 42-33 at halftime and 44-33 after a layup by East Laurens’ Deanna Lowther in the first minute of the third quarter, methodically chipped away at the deficit and eventually took the lead on a layup by Audrey Lunsford with 2:51 to play to make it a 55-54 game.

East Laurens went to work from there, converting on 7 of 8 free-throw attempts and getting a layup from Zahmaria Robinson in the final 2:19 to put the Blue Devils away. Alasia Wiggins, whose two free throws with 2:41 remaining gave East Laurens the lead for good, went 4-for-4 from the line during the run.

“My girls are fighters,” said East Laurens coach Danielle Lowther, Deanna’s mother. “They’ve been fighting since the beginning of the season. They work hard, and they believed. They just want to win, and that’s what they did.”

Deanna Lowther and Garyuanna Mitchell led the way for the Falcons. Lowther, a senior, had 18 points, 11 rebounds, two blocks, two steals and an assist. Mitchell, a freshman, scored 17 points and had 10 rebounds, two blocks and four steals.

“We call them the twin towers,” Danielle Lowther said. “We haven’t come across a team this whole season that’s been able to stop both of them. Both of them do some dynamite stuff rebounding, and they both can score. For the most part, both of them get double-doubles every game, and they were very good today.”

Jameria Bing added 12 points for East Laurens.

Elbert County led 10-4 less than three minutes into a fast-paced first half. East Laurens answered with a 24-8 run over the next six minutes to take a 28-18 lead, and the Falcons took a nine-point lead into halftime.

The pace slowed considerably in the second half, as the teams combined for 43 points in the final two quarters after getting 75 in the first two.

“Much credit to Elbert County. They turned it up on the defensive end,” Danielle Lowther said. “We missed a few shots that we should’ve made, but a lot of that was because of their defense.”