Greater Atlanta Christian’s Kaleigh Addie and Beach’s Kaila Rougier carried their teams’ offenses for the better part of three and a half quarters of the Class AAA girls basketball championship game.
Then Addie took it up a notch. The sophomore guard scored 12 of the Spartans’ final 18 points over the final five minutes and led GAC to a 54-44 victory Thursday at the Macon Centreplex.
Addie finished with a game-high 28 points and helped the sixth-ranked Spartans (20-12) capture their ninth state championship overall but first since 2007. Third-ranked Beach finished 22-10.
“Down the line, grit and determination won the game for us,” GAC coach Jessica Guarneri said. “We only scored six points in the third quarter, and I was saying to myself, ‘You can’t win a state championship scoring six points in any quarter, let alone the third quarter.’ In the fourth quarter, I think you saw what I see every single day, and that’s them saying, ‘It’s go time.’”
Trailing 37-36 with less 4:50 remaining, Addie scored layups on three consecutive possessions and made two free throws the next trip down the court to give the Spartans a 44-39 lead. Beach closed the deficit to three points twice, the last time at 44-41 on two free throws by Rougier with 3:06 left, but GAC went 6-for-8 from the free-throw line in the final 46 seconds to close it out.
Before GAC’s late run, neither team had led by more than four points.
Addie scored 16 of the Spartans’ 24 points in the first half, accounting for all but one of their field goals, but was held scoreless in the third quarter when Beach began using a box-and-one defense.
“She can score in the open court,” Guarneri said. “When Kaleigh Addie shines is when the court is in front of her. We were having a tough time getting the ball to her in the halfcourt set, so our defense enabled us to get her the ball in transition, where they couldn’t really stop her.”
Ava Irvin made just one field goal but finished with 13 points. She was 11-for-13 from the free-throw line, including 4-for-4 in the final 46 seconds.
Rougier scored eight of the Bulldogs’ 11 points in the first quarter and finished with 20. Madison Evans was the only other double-figure scorer with 11.
Aside from those players, the offenses struggled. GAC shot 40 percent from the field but just 25 percent not including Addie, and the Spartans were 19-for-31 on free throws. Beach shot 27.1 percent from the field and was 1-for-15 on 3-pointers. And the teams were credited with a combined three assists for the game on 32 made field goals, 16 by each team.
GAC played by far the most difficult schedule in Class AAA, according to the MaxPreps strength-of-schedule ratings, and came into Thursday’s game with more losses than any girls finalist in any classification. Those included a 49-48 setback against North Hall in the Region 7-AAA final, which was the Spartans’ final loss of the season.
“I think that loss to North Hall was the reason we just won the state championship,” Guarneri said. “I think that that taste in their mouth at the end of that game, they never wanted to feel that again. And now they don’t have to.”
Beach - 11-11-10-12 - 44
GAC - 11-13-6-24 - 54
Beach (44): Amiya Pretty 2, Madison Evans 11, Alexus Brockington 2, Kaila Rougier 20, Destiny Whitehead 2, Aryanna Collins, Marquita Brockington, Allejah Moultry 6, Kayla Bivins, Ameyah Dantzler 1, Alicia El-Amin.
Greater Atlanta Christian (54): Laurren Randolph 2, Jaci Bolden 7, Jillian Thomas, Ava Irvin 13, Kaleigh Addie 28, Molly Pritchard 4.
About the Author
