After a strong 58-49 victory against Creekside in the semifinals of the Region 5A tournament, the girls basketball team faced off against Maynard-Jackson on Feb. 17 for the region championship.
Midtown ended the regular season 21-4 with two of their losses to Jackson with Jackson finishing their regular season 22-1.
The game started rough for the Knights struggling with turnovers, hurting their offense greatly and ending the first half down 30-20.
“The turnovers significantly impacted the game,” junior point guard Cate Barton said. “They would get really easy baskets, and it also helped them get momentum and kind of made us scared and nervous, and we played frantically.”
Head coach Martravious Little agreed that the difficulties with turnovers caused major issues on both ends.
“[Turnovers] have been one of our main focuses coming into this game because we can’t let them get easy points,” Little said. “They thrive off of getting easy points. If we can just get back [on defense], I don’t feel like they can beat us.”
Although the second half was better overall for the Knights, they could not overcome the deficit accrued in the first half and the game ended 56-44.
Sophomore point guard Devin Bockman led the team in scoring this year averaging over 15 points per game, and she continued that against Jackson, scoring 18 points including 4 threes. She agreed that although there was a strong effort in the second half, they could not come back from the mistakes made in the first half.
“The reason we lost is because we started too slow,” Bockman said. “We let them get a gap ahead of us that we were never able to close, and those small mistakes cost us.”
Little also believed that a large factor of the deficit was the mentality difference between Midtown and Jackson.
“We were moving extremely sluggish because they were playing tough, and we were shying away from the basketball,” Little said. “We just have to be mentally tougher and match toughness with toughness.”
Now that the team is competing in the state tournament, Barton believes that they need to take advantage of their strengths.
“A strength we need to capitalize on is our defense,” Barton said. “It’s our team’s identity and when we’re playing good on defense, the offense comes easy. We definitely need to focus on playing our best defensively. If they can’t score, they can’t win.”
Little said that the team must go into the tournament with the attitude that they will be facing strong teams every night, and they must be playing at the top of their game.
“Going into the state tournament I am going to highlight playing tough because every single night you are going against teams like Maynard-Jackson,” Little said. “Right now we are with the best of the best, you don’t have any more teams with one win or two wins, and they are going to watch our film and come at us this exact same way.”
Senior Briaiah Lewis agreed that the team’s mentality needs to be stronger, which is a focal point for the Knights heading into the state tournament.
“We didn’t come out aggressive enough,” Lewis said. “If we had come out knowing we could win, it would have been a different game. Knowing that that was the reason we lost this game, I feel like we have to come at every team like we can win and we can win. Last year we went to the Elite 8, and we want to go further so for each game we have to approach it with the sense that everyone has to be at the top of their game.”
