Campbell's Title Dreams Fade Away

Having cleared the elite eight hill last weekend, the Lady Spartans couldn’t climb over the mountain that was Norcross’ Diamond DeShields and the Lady Blue Devils in Thursday’s final four matchup at the Gwinnett Arena.

As they did last year when they eliminated Campbell in the quarterfinals of the Class AAAAA state playoffs, the Lady Blue Devils broke open a close game after three quarters of play Thursday afternoon and went on to score a 66-46 win over Campbell.

Last year, Norcross trailed by one early in the fourth quarter before pulling away for a double-digit win over the Lady Spartans.

The loss, just the third in the last 21 games for sixth-ranked Campbell, ended its season at 25-7. Norcross (28-3) is set to defend its state championship versus Region 4-AAAAA foe McEachern Friday night at 7.

“The kids fought hard and I told them afterwards how proud I was of them’’ said Campbell coach Randy McClure.

To begin the game, the Lady Spartans had both health issues, with standout guard Chakecia Miller nursing a sore ankle, and foul problems, with post player Angel Foster picking up two early fouls.

And they also had issues containing the Parade All-American DeShields, who 22 seconds into the game drained a trey on her way to a team-high 21 points. Norcross in fact scored the game’s first eight points and led 16-8 after one quarter play. The lead ballooned to as many as 13 points in the second quarter before Norcross took a 31-21 lead to the halftime locker room.

But there was no quit in the Lady Spartans as Erica Norwood, playing in her final game at Campbell, sparked a 13-3 run to begin the second half to knot the game at 34 apiece. The fourth quarter began with Campbell trailing by just four points at 41-37.

But Norcross’ overall balance proved to be too much as it went on a 32-12 run over the game's final 11 minutes to pull away from a tiring Campbell team that had expended a lot of energy playing catch-up for the game’s first three quarters.

“We might have run out of gas, but really we just didn’t finish our shots,’’ McClure explained. “We were able to fight back, but not all the way.’’

The Lady Blue Devils had much more size than did Campbell and it was evident as defensively stout Norcross held the Lady Spartans to a mere three fourth quarter field goals. Meanwhile, the six-foot DeShields, the 6-foot-3 Dearica Hamby (17 points) and the 6-foot-1 Shayla Cooper (12 points) proved to be too much inside for Campbell to handle.  

Norwood finished with a game-high 24 points while fellow senior Jalessea Phillips added eight points. Thursday’s defeat snapped a seven-game winning streak, during which the squad won by an average margin of 17.4 points. Campbell will lose five seniors from a team that was the first in school history to reach the state semifinals.

“It was a great year and I’m so proud of this team,’’ McClure said. "I told them they set the bar for other (Campbell) teams to have to follow and to live up to. They will always be the first team that got us to the final four.’’