MACON -- Yes, the Wesleyan girls know what to do when they get to Macon. That they won their eighth championship since 2002 with a 65-43 win over Pace Academy in the Class A championship Saturday makes it look as if the Lady Wolves simply flick a switch and championships happen. Metronomes appear inconsistent by comparison.
There was more drama than that.
As Wesleyan coach Jan Azar left the floor at halftime, her team leading 23-20, she stomped her feet and waved her arms, clearly unhappy with the way things had gone to that point.
“I was angry,” Azar said, noting that the second-quarter clock expired as a basket for her team was waved off. “I thought it beat the buzzer, but that’s one call in a long basketball game. I was more angry with the way my team was playing than I was with anything else. We just weren’t playing the way we know how to play.”
Indeed, the Lady Wolves (32-2) held a shaky three-point lead, and though Pace led only once, at 20-18, Wesleyan mainstays Holli Wilkins and Katie Frerking, had only five points between them.
More to Azar’s discomfort, though, was her team’s level of aggression.
“We needed to start doing the things we do well,” Azar said. “Stop backing off and slowing down the basketball game. We were walking up the floor, and that’s what [Pace] wanted us to do.”
Some at the Macon Centreplex, including Pace, must have felt an upset brewing.
“I was a little worried, but at the same time I knew we could handle it,” said Wesleyan senior Grace Leah Baughn, who capped her four-title career with 25 points, including 16 in the second half. “We talked about the worst thing we could do is come out and play scared. We wanted to come out and play our game.”
Whatever the concerns, the Lady Wolves squelched them in the opening minute of the third quarter, which they opened with a 16-4 run, sparked by a pair of baskets by Brittany Stevens, who finished with 12 points, and two more by Baughn, all but sealing the team’s 21st consecutive win.
The Wesleyan lead swelled from three at the half to 39-24 with 1:58 to go in the third quarter. After that, Pace got no closer than 13 points.
It was the eighth title since 2002 and fourth consecutive for Wesleyan, which got nine points from Frerking and seven from Wilkins.
Morgan Batey scored 20 to lead Pace (27-6), one of three Class A teams to stay within 20 points of Wesleyan during the regular season.
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