Detroit King’s Tia Tedford
After Detroit King’s Micaela Kelly beat the third-quarter buzzer with a half-court heave, one had to wonder if there were any place the Crusaders couldn’t drain one?
Apparently, the short list consists of the balcony, the concession stand and the parking lot. Otherwise, King fired up treys from the baseline, the top of the key, and several steps behind the arc, sinking 11 of them while shocking Southfield-Lathrup, 74-56 in a Class A regional final at Dearborn Fordson.
Not blessed with height or depth, King (24-1) has thrived with the outside shot all winter long. They sunk three triples in a row to take a 29-23 lead with two minutes to play in the first half, and never let up until after they increased their lead to 21 by the time Kelly hit that buzzer-beater a quarter later.
“Since we’re small and we’re guards, we had to do something,” she said. “We know we can’t out-rebound them, we know we just had to box out and make them from the outside.
Girls hoops: Regional finals schedule, semis results
“We practice a lot on our shooting threes because we know we’re strictly good three-point shooters.”
The game was nip-and-tuck for much of the first half until King caught fire.
“It was too close and we knew we had bad turnovers or at least bad mistakes that closed it up, so we just decided to play as a team and not worry about it,” said Kelly, who has signed with DePaul.
“I told them to relax, that was basically all we had to do — relax, and knock them down,” King coach William Winfield said.
Once King got some breathing room, the Crusaders seemed to up their game, while Lathrup lost its edge.
“When the threes start falling (against you), now you wonder what’s going on. You’ve got your starting five out there and they’re knocking down threes,” Winfield said. “We’ve got more than one girl who can shoot those threes. We’ve got five that can shoot the three-ball with some type of consistency, and that was the big difference.”
Tia Tedford hit four on the way to a game-high 20 points, but she wasn’t alone: Kelly (two, 13 points), Jordan Lewis (one, 11 points), Alicia Norman (one, 9 points) and Erica Whitley-Jackson (two, 6 points), all lit it up from long-range.
“Once we got down by 10, it was just a rain shower of shots coming,” Lathrup coach Michele Marshall said. “They shoot a lot of threes. Teenagers can get in the habit of wanting to answer those threes, instead of being patient with it. We committed mental errors because of fatigue, and that made a difference.”
King was 11 of 17 beyond the arc, while Lathrup was just 2 of 9.
The Chargers got 18 points from Deja Church, 17 from Antoinette Miller and 13 from Taiye Bello, but only five players scored.