Sports
Avondale Girls Basketball Narrowly Survives Semifinals Game Against Troy High
The Yellow Jackets advance to district finals with 46-45 win over the Colts at home Wednesday night.
AUBURN HILLS – Sometimes an extended run in the postseason takes a little luck.
The bounces certainly went Avondale’s way in a close 46-45 win over Troy in the Class A district semifinals on Wednesday night.
“Through any tournament run, you need luck,” Avondale coach David Muczynski said. “That’s what we got tonight, we got lucky,”
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Muczynski felt his team didn’t execute at times and missed a lot of opportunities, particularly from the free throw line. The Yellow Jackets finished the night 13 of 34 from the line.
“Normally, we are a better free-throw shooting team than that,” Muczynski said. “Truth be told, today I thought we were tight. Maybe we need to practice with a little more intensity.”
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Hannah Little and Quennece Garrison made sure the win didn’t slip away.
Garrison scored six of her 12 points in the final four minutes. All three of her baskets came at key moments down the stretch.
Midway through the quarter, the senior tied the game 37-37. With 2:37 left to go, she hit a layup to give her team its first lead of the fourth quarter, 39-37.
Her last points came in the final 40 seconds off of Sabrina Douglas’ missed free throw. Garrison was right in position for the offensive rebound and put-back.
Little made her presence felt throughout the game. She scored a team-high 15 points and had a double-double with 17 rebounds.
“We know what we have to do to win a game, we know we had to box out, and if we had hit our free throws, the game wouldn’t have been that close,” Little said.
Not only did the Colts (9-12) have to deal with Little’s size advantage, it had to fight through foul trouble for almost the entire game.
Four of Troy’s five starters picked up three fouls before halftime. Sabria Cotton and Sydney Heath both were called for their fourth fouls in the first two minutes of the second half.
When Cotton picked up her fourth, she had scored more than half the Colts’ points. Both girls had to watch the majority of the quarter from the bench.
“I don’t think it gets any tougher that that,” Colts coach Dennis Koch said. “We had to fight through it. We were able to get some contributions from the bench, but we came up short.”
While Cotton and Heath sat, senior point guard Karin Moss kept the score close with seven points and two assists. She had a hand in nearly all of Troy’s points in the third quarter. Moss helped erase a 19-17 halftime deficit and give her team a 31-28 lead going into the fourth.
“She really created a lot of their offense,” Muczynski said. “I thought she sacrificed some of her stats to keep her team in it.”
Moss finished the night with nine points. Cotton had a game-high 20 points with three 3-pointers, but was only 1-of-9 from the free throw line. She missed three free throws at the end of the fourth that would’ve given Troy back the lead.
Avondale will try for its second consecutive district title at home on Friday night (7 p.m.) against Waterford Kettering. Kettering won the late game on Wednesday over Pontiac 39-38.
