The Forest Park Panthers dug themselves a hole with a scoring drought of almost 10 minutes in the first half and had just 29 points heading into the final quarter of the Class AAAA girls basketball semifinals on Wednesday at Gwinnett Arena.
But they rescued themselves with a 27-point fourth period and went on to beat Douglas County 56-47 and advance to the championship game for the first time since 1970, when Forest Park beat Cherokee to win the Class AAA title. The fourth-ranked Panthers (26-5) will play for the championship at 3 p.m. Friday at Gwinnett Arena. Third-ranked Douglas County lost for the first time in 31 games this season.
“You’re going to have games where you can’t make shots, and this was one of those games where we couldn’t make any shots,” Forest Park coach Steven Cole said. “But you can always play defense. We kinda call that grind time. When it comes time to grind, that’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to grind it out. We’re not going to worry about shooting 3s or anything. We’re going to play hard defense and go to the basket.”
Forest Park led 7-2 early in the first quarter but did not score again until Keyonna Allen made a short jumper to cut Douglas County’s lead to 15-9 with 3:14 remaining in the first half. The Tigers increased the lead to 19-11 at halftime before Forest Park began to fight its way back into the game.
Freshman Kayla Potts scored nine of her game-high 20 points in the third quarter to help Forest Park pull even at 29-29 with 1:25 to play in the period. The Panthers took their first lead since early in the first quarter on a three-point play by Allen to make it 36-33 with 6:50 remaining in the game. Douglas County never led again.
Ashlee Cole scored eight of her 14 points in the final 3:02 and was 6-for-8 from the free-throw line in the final 58 seconds to put the game away.
“I thought we would start off fast because we’ve been here before, but unfortunately it looked like we had the jitters and they didn’t,” Steven Cole said. “But they were making layups, and any time a team’s making layups on you, you’re going to be behind.”
Allen finished with 11 points for Forest Park, which was making its second consecutive appearance in the semifinals. Kristina Wells led Douglas County with 13 points.
“Everybody knows the trouble that Clayton County has been going through,” Cole said. “We’re no longer just representing Forest Park High School. Right now we’re representing Clayton County. This just does wonders.”
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