Nearly one year ago to the date, Murphy girls basketball head coach Ray Gutierrez had to do one of the hardest things he had ever done in his life as a coach – inform his undefeated Lady Bulldogs that they wouldn’t have the chance to play in the state 1A championship game they had worked so hard to get to due to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic.
“One of the saddest days of my life as a coach was last year when I told the girls that we couldn’t go play in the state championships,” Gutierrez said, reflecting on the last year. “It was miserable for me to see the heartbreak in their eyes because they couldn’t go and finish the season.”
This season, with unfinished business on their minds after being named co-champions due to the cancellation of the championship game, the Lady Bulldogs fought their way back to the game which was taken from them last year and proved, once and for all, that the Murphy girls program is the best in 1A.
Murphy matched up against the Eastern Regional Champion Princeton team 41/2 hours away from home at Wheatmore High School in Trinity on Saturday in the state championship and steamrolled Princeton, ironically also named the Lady Bulldogs, handling them 76-36 on their way to the program’s fourth state championship and second in as many year counting the co-championship.
“I’m just super proud of our kids and our program,” Gutierrez added, speaking of Murphy’s vindicating victory. “It was one of the worst days of my coaching career having to tell those kids that they couldn’t play in the state championship last year, and now this is one of the best days of my coaching career.”
Defense wins championships
While the final score doesn’t reflect it, the Lady Bulldogs started off the game ice cold from the floor, missing wide-open jumpers and quickly trailed by a slim margin of 5-0, which would end up being Princeton’s only lead of the game. Within the next few offensive plays, Murphy righted the ship thanks to five points from junior Torin Rogers, who tied the game at 5-5 before the Lady Bulldogs’ offensive wheels began turning.
Once Murphy was able to get a few shots to fall, the Lady Bulldogs jumped into their press defense and began wreaking havoc on Princeton’s offense. After setting up their press, the Lady Bulldogs quickly jumped ahead 10-5 on Princeton.
“We knew that if we could score that first basket we could jump into our press and we could get the wheels to start rolling,” Gutierrez said of the Lady Bulldogs’ defense. “We got off to a bit of a slow start, and it didn’t seem like we could jump into it, but once we got going and jumped into it, we got some easy baskets. From there, just seeing the ball get through the basket I think was contagious. We knew that we wanted to put as much pressure on their guards as possible and we did that.”
The Lady Bulldogs’ press and hounding man-to-man defense would result in 25 turnovers by Princeton, which lead to 32 points off of turnovers for Murphy in the victory.
“Their coach said that they hadn’t seen a man-to-man defense all year,” Gutierrez said. “And so we knew that was going to be a huge advantage for us.”
Murphy ended the opening quarter with a slim 19-14 margin over Princeton, but the 5-point lead for the Lady Bulldogs would soon blossom early in the second quarter.
In the zone
In the game of basketball, the zone defense is a smart defensive scheme that limits driving lanes and forces opponents to take perimeter shots – with that being said, playing a zone defense against the Lady Bulldogs isn’t the smartest scheme to start. This became obvious in the second quarter, when Murphy senior Kaiya Pickens found her rhythm and torched the Princeton defense for 13-2 scoring run on her own.
Pickens, who started cold from the floor in the opening quarter, caught fire early in the second, finding herself open from behind the 3-point line. The senior knocked down her first triple, then another, then another, finishing her demoralizing scoring run with a mid-range jumper and layup that extended Murphy’s lead to 34-21 midway through the second quarter.
“Pregame, usually, I hit the last shot at our rim and I make it. But tonight, I didn’t,” Pickens, who finished with 18 points in the victory, said of catching fire in the second after missing her first four 3-pointer attempts. “But I finally got going, and I think that really helped us.”
Three more 3-pointers from Torin Rogers and a triple apiece from junior Amber Martin and Taylor Phillips further added to the outside onslaught from the Lady Bulldogs in the first half. Murphy would finish the opening half shooting an above average 8-22 (36 percent) from 3-point range – one of which was a highlight to end the half.
MVP
Murphy forward Torin Rogers snatched the ball out of the air for the steal with the clock ticking down before the half and the Lady Bulldogs leading Princeton 42-23. Rogers pushed the ball down the floor and dribbled a few feet inside of the half-court line, pulling up from deep as the halftime buzzer sounded and putting an emphatic punctuation on Murphy’s dominant 45-23 first half against Princeton.
The junior, who had been consistently seeing double and triple-teams throughout the post-season, had her way with the Princeton defense throughout the game, scoring at all
three levels on her way to a game-high, double-double of 22 points and 10 rebounds.
“Going into the game, watching some film, we knew that they were going to run a zone and I feel like the zone opened up a lot of shots for everyone,” Rogers said of facing the zone. “We executed very well and we were all able to make shots and it was great for the team.”
Rogers, one of western North Carolina’s top prospects from the 2021 class, stuffed the stat-sheet for Murphy, dishing out three assists while dominating on the defensive end with four steals and three blocks in the victory. To no surprise, Rogers was named the 1A Women’s Basketball Championship Most Valuable Player for her dominant performance on both sides of the ball for Murphy.
Bully ball
After Pickens’ explosion in the second quarter blew the game wide open and Rogers’ buzzer-beating triple punctuated the Lady Bulldogs’ dominant second quarter, senior forward Sarah Pullium picked up where Pickens left off and began to bully Princeton on the inside and in the paint to maintain the growing margin.
Pullium, who was named the Most Outstanding Player for Murphy, punished Princeton on the glass, repeatedly keeping possessions alive for the Lady Bulldogs and capitalizing on the soft interior defense. Pullium finished with 20 points and 8 rebounds for Murphy in the victory, with five of those rebounds coming on the offensive end of the floor.
“Just to play hard, play how we always play,” Pullium said of the key to the dominance inside against Princeton. “Just listening and doing what we know how to do.”
The senior forward scored 12 of her points in the third quarter alone and harassed Princeton on the defensive end of the floor, coming away with four steals in the title game.
Heading into the fourth quarter, the Lady Bulldogs held a massive 68-27 lead after outscoring Princeton by a margin of 23-4 in the third quarter alone.
Senior sendoff
As the fourth quarter opened and the Lady Bulldogs’ lead continued to grow, the Murphy starters subbed out of the game and headed to the bench to begin celebrating their victory. Minutes later, the buzzer sounded and the Lady Bulldogs meshed into a pile of celebrating players as the local contingent that made the journey cheered from the stands.
Murphy’s 2021 state championship closes the chapter of the fantastic four-year run that the senior trio of Pullium, Pickens and forward Leah Moses have been a part of since joining the Lady Bulldogs’ program as freshman.
“It means that hard work pays off,” Pullium said of Murphy’s senior trio having finally played in and won a state championship. “I’m just so grateful to have had such a great group of girls around me and I’m so happy that we finally did this.”
“It’s the best way to end your high school basketball career,” Pickens said of ending her Lady Bulldog tenure with a state championship. “If you would’ve told us when we were freshman that we would be state champions two times by the time we ended as seniors, we wouldn’t have believed you, so it’s a great feeling.”
“It’s really awesome that we get to end our basketball careers on a good note,” Moses said, following Pickens. “Just like Kaiya said, as freshman, we never would have thought that we would be state champions two years in a row. But it’s really awesome that we got to prove that we could not only be co-championships, but actually state champions.”
Gutierrez said from the moment he first came to Murphy and saw this group of seniors playing as middle schoolers, he knew that they would be a winning class.
“When I saw these seniors as middle school kids when I first came to Murphy, I thought to myself, ‘We can win with these players, we can win with them,’ ” Gutierrez said of his trio of seniors. “It was a big group, I think it started out at eight and we ended with three, but we would not be in the position that we are in without these three seniors. All playoffs, Sarah, Kaiya and Leah all went on an incredible run and had a different look in their eyes after that last loss, they were not going to let us lose. It look them until playoff season to buckle down, but they’re going to be missed. Today it feels so worth it, and I’m proud of these kids.”
‘Co’ no more
After the emergence of the COVID-19 resulted in the cancellation of last year’s NCHSAA 1A Basketball Championships, which would have saw an undefeated Murphy team facing off against the Eastern Champion Weldon, the Lady Bulldogs were on a mission this season to prove once and for all that Murphy was the best team in the 1A class.
The Lady Bulldogs did just that over the course of their title-winning playoff run, getting vengeance on regular season rival Robbinsville in the Elite Eight and enduring a rematch of last year’s Final Four match with Mitchell before downing Princeton in the championship game.
And now there’s no more “Co” in the Lady Bulldogs’ state championship and Murphy sits atop the 1A throne. The post-game celebration was a long time coming for the Lady Bulldogs, after four straight final fours and unfinished business from last season’s cancellation.
“In terms of the future of high school athletics, the reclassification and then of course the charter schools, I don’t know if [this success] will happen again,” Gutierrez said. “You just don’t know, you may look back and say, ‘Man, this is a pretty good run,’ I mean, four years for a traditional school like Murphy. For our kids and for our community, I’m just super proud to be a Bulldog today.”
The 2021 championship is the fourth state championship for the Lady Bulldogs in girls basketball, and their second in as many years counting last season’s co-state championship.
“We actually got to play and we got to show everybody how good we actually are,” Pullium said of being able to finish the season this year. “I feel closure, I’m getting closure from this.”
“There’s no ‘co’ for this championship,” Rogers said, following up Pullium with a laugh.