There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a gym when your team is losing. It isn’t silence. Silence would be dignified. It’s more of a nervous rustle: popcorn bags, fidgeting feet, a dad somewhere on the top row explaining zone defense to nobody. For three quarters on Saturday, the Lady Tigers’ game against Graves had that quiet.
And then the fourth quarter happened, and the quiet was carried out of the building on a stretcher.
Final: CCHS 42, Graves 38.
The Bit Where It Looked Grim
Let’s not pretend the early going was a stroll in the park. Graves came out swinging, led by Bree Cox, who spent the first quarter shooting as though the rim owed her money. She dropped seven in the opening eight minutes, and Graves led 12–8 after one.
The Lady Tigers steadied things in the second. Carliah Hobson went to work around the basket for six points in the quarter, and by halftime the gap was down to a very manageable 20–18. Manageable, mind you, in the way a leaky roof is manageable: technically fine, but you wouldn’t want to leave it overnight.
The third quarter was a defensive arm-wrestle. Neither side could buy a basket. Laelah Watkins broke the drought with a three, the only one CCHS hit all day and well worth the wait. Serenity Ewing and Genesis McGee added to it, and the Tigers walked into the final quarter trailing 26–25.
One point. The width of a fingernail. The sort of deficit that makes grown adults chew the strings on their hoodies.
The Bit Where It Absolutely Did Not Look Grim
The Lady Tigers scored 17 points in the fourth quarter. That’s more than they managed in the first and third quarters combined, which is a bit like a car that has been chugging along at 40 mph suddenly remembering it has a turbo.
Dominique Allensworth led the charge with seven points in the fourth alone, scoring inside, then scoring inside again, then calmly knocking down a free throw in the middle of it as if she’d been doing it since birth. Genesis McGee and Carliah Hobson added four each down the stretch, and Carlie Hobson chipped in a bucket. Graves never stopped fighting, but every time they clawed close, the Tigers had an answer.
The defense, meanwhile, decided that Graves had been allowed quite enough of the ball, thank you. CCHS piled up nine steals in the second half after just three in the first. Passes that had been safe all afternoon suddenly ended up in Tiger hands, and every steal sent another jolt through the stands.
Speaking of the stands…
A Word About the Cheering Section
Somewhere along the way, the Tigers boys basketball team appointed themselves the official noise department, and they took the job seriously. As the fourth quarter tightened, they got louder. As the lead grew, they got louder still. And when the Lady Tigers finally sealed it, the boys went off like a box of fireworks that somebody dropped down the stairs.
This is precisely what a school is supposed to look like. One team on the floor, another team in the bleachers losing its voice for them. In an inaugural year, with every tradition still being written for the first time, that’s one worth keeping. Gentlemen, consider yourselves booked for the rest of the season.
The Numbers, For Those Who Like Numbers
- Carliah Hobson led the Lady Tigers with 12 points, all of them from inside the arc, plus 3 assists and 2 steals.
- Dominique Allensworth added 11 points, 7 of them in the fourth quarter, plus 3 steals.
- Genesis McGee filled the stat sheet with 8 points, 6 assists and 5 steals. That isn’t a stat line so much as a full-time job.
- Serenity Ewing and Carlie Hobson each scored 4.
- Laelah Watkins hit the team’s only three and grabbed a team-high 4 rebounds.
- As a team, the Lady Tigers shot 18-of-34 on two-pointers, dished 12 assists and recorded 12 steals.
For Graves, Bree Cox finished with a game-high 18 and Carli Goatley added 11. They’re a good, scrappy team, and they made the Tigers earn every inch of this one.
The Bit at the End
Comebacks are funny things. On paper, this was a four-point win in November. In the gym, it felt like something bigger: a team that trailed for most of the afternoon, never once looked rattled, and then took the game by the scruff of the neck when it mattered most.
The Lady Tigers didn’t panic at 26–25. They played harder. They got after it on defense. And they gave a whole gym full of people, including one very loud row of basketball boys, a reason to stand up and shout.
Not a bad way to spend a Saturday. Not a bad way at all.
Go Tigers.
