Ellijay, Ga. – After a 27-point second quarter led to a 13-point halftime lead, Murphy girls basketball looked like it would start off the 2022-23 season on the right foot. A bucket out of the break extended the lead to 15 over Gilmer on Nov. 29.
But things did not go according to plan. The Lady Bulldogs’ offense dried up, and some adjustments on both ends of the floor allowed the Lady Bobcats to claw all the way back by the end of the third quarter. After a tight fourth quarter, the game went to overtime, where Gilmer prevailed 54-51.
“We played really well in the first half,” head coach Gary Thompson said. “We moved the ball, got it to open people and hit shots. That’s the positive.
“And then you take all that out in the second half. All that we did good in the first half, we did bad the second half.”
The game marked the start of a new chapter for the Murphy program, with former head coach Ray Gutierrez moving out of the area over the summer and no rotation players remaining from the back-to-back state championship teams of 2020-21. The Lady Bulldogs showed glimpses when the offense was working in the second quarter, but couldn’t carry that over to the other three quarters.
Junior Lailee Holloway led Murphy with 12 points, in the first half, while junior Emma Ledford and sophomore Addie Johnson were the other players in double figures with 11 and 10, respectively.
Sophomore Julia Dockery and senior Lochlan Rogers joined that trio in the starting lineup, while freshman Emma Laney, sophomore Cayla Geer, junior Saige Kent and senior Charli McDaniel all saw playing time. However, only Geer and Laney got minutes off the bench when the game was close late, even when Rogers fouled out early in the fourth quarter.
It looked like the first quarter of the season for the Lady Bulldogs in the opening frame, as they missed easy shots and didn’t look cohesive on the offensive end. Six of their points came from free throws, and they hit just two shots from the field.
Things opened up in the second quarter, as Murphy started to find open shooters. An 8-0 run pushed the lead to 35-22 at halftime, then 37-22 after a bucket by Ledford to start the third quarter.
Things went sideways after that. GIlmer (1-3 overall) started to trap and pressure on the perimeter, knowing the Lady Bulldogs don’t have a post presence inside. Murphy went cold and got some unlucky bounces during that stretch, allowing the Lady Bobcats to slowly chip away at the lead. A 3-pointer by Sophia Riblet tied the game at 39, and Gilmer led 44-42 before Murphy scored six straight to take a 48-44 lead.
“Their pressure bothered us,” Thompson said. “We panicked when they put pressure on us. You have to attack pressure with pressure, and we cowed down from it. That’s what hurt us.”
The Lady Bobcats’ Charley Poteet hit two free throws and a shot to send it into overtime. The extra period started off right for Murphy with a layup from Dockery, only to watch Gilmer take the lead.
After Ledford split a pair of free throws, Sophia Riblet’s wide-open layup pushed the Lady Bobcats lead back out to three with under a minute left. Murphy had one last chance after Madison Bradshaw missed the front end of a one-and-one, but Johnson’s three-pointer as time expired was off line.
“I had no idea what to expect going into this game,” Thompson said. “The girls didn’t know what to expect. We needed this game we didn’t get a scrimmage. So we’re going to learn from this game.”
Things didn’t get easier Friday, when the Lady Bulldogs lost at Highlands (1-2), 38-24. That was the least amount of points Murphy scored since it put up just 16 in a loss to Hiwassee Dam on Feb. 6, 2016, and the first time the Lady Bulldogs have lost back-to-back games since they opened the 2018-19 season with losses to Freedom and Smoky Mountain.