Hiwassee Dam – After a 48-24 win over Andrews on Jan. 3, Murphy girls basketball coach Gary Thompson said he got on his team pretty hard about not being ready to play, and the team felt the same way. They knew they needed to be better the next night against Hiwassee Dam.
The Lady Bulldogs put that belief into action, leading by as many as 15 points in the first half while playing with the faster tempo they needed to to be successful. That allowed them to withstand the inevitable Lady Eagles’ push down the stretch to hold on for a 63-59 win.
“This is an extremely hard place to win, regardless of what kind of team you have,” Thompson said. “I can count the number of teams I’ve had that have won down here on one hand. Tonight was huge.”
Against Andrews, Murphy couldn’t hit shots in the first half and only led 21-17 at halftime. The Lady Bulldogs finally pulled away near the end of the third quarter, though it never felt like they played the way they needed to be successful.
With the half-court offense still being an adventure at times, Murphy likes to get out and run when possible, despite having limited depth. They make up for that depth by being able to get up and down the floor, and took advantage of Hiwassee Dam’s lapses on defense to get easy fast breaks.
“We’ve been working that in practice a lot, just really pushing the floor,” sophomore guard Addie Johnson said. “We’re not really big, we don’t really have much length, so we kind of have to use our speed to our advantage.”
It also helped that after a cold shooting night against Andrews, Murphy hit nine 3-pointers, including five from Johnson in the first half. The last one came with about four minutes left in the second quarter; after that, Lady Eagles head coach David Payne but a box-and-one defense on her to make sure she couldn’t get any clean looks.
While Johnson would finish 19 points, junior Lailee Holloway carried the load in the second half to finish with a team-high 20. Olivia McNabb would lead the way for Hiwassee Dam with a game-high 26, while Kiera Taylor added 12.
A layup from Holloway late in the second quarter extended Murphy’s lead to 33-18, and the Lady Eagles slowly worked their way back into the game from there. They scored five straight points to end the half, and continued to exploit the mismatch inside by getting McNabb plenty of post touches. Taylor
also started to get going in the third quarter as well, with eight points in the frame.
But every time Hiwassee Dam was ready to really turn up the pressure, the Lady Bulldogs would answer with a timely bucket. After their lead was cut to five at 37-32, a three by Holloway extended it back out to eight.
A layup by Taylor cut the lead to three near the end of the third quarter, only for Lochlan Rogers to answer with a deep 3-pointer from the left wing. When the Lady Eagles trimmed the lead to six in the fourth, transition layups from Emma Laney and Johnson to push the lead to 54-44 with about four minutes left.
Hiwassee Dam never went away from then on and, despite some sloppy turnovers and ball-handling, Murphy did what it needed to come out on top. The Lady Eagles had opportunities to make it closer at the foul line all night but struggled, hitting just 11 of 25 shots from the charity stripe.
The Lady Bulldogs have won four of five since a 1-9 start, though don’t have a ton of margin for error. They’re starting to build an identity of a team that can get up and down the court and score if things are going well, and the goal is to keep things moving in that direction.
“We took our first couple of games as kind of trial and error,” Johnson said. “Our last couple of games we’ve gotten into a rhythm and settled in and learned, nope, we can do this, let’s just
keep pushing what we’re good at.”
