GIRLS BASKETBALL

White leads way as East girls make it 2 in a row

Little Rock Hall’s Tierra Coffey (left) of the East and Ashdown’s LaBreshia Scott of the West battle for a rebound during Thursday night’s girls All-Star basketball game in Conway.
Little Rock Hall’s Tierra Coffey (left) of the East and Ashdown’s LaBreshia Scott of the West battle for a rebound during Thursday night’s girls All-Star basketball game in Conway.

CONWAY - The East and West teams have alternated victories in the Arkansas High School Coaches Association All-Star girls basketball game each year since 2005. But Calli White of Fort Smith Southside made sure her team bucked that trend Thursday night.

White scored 10 points and had four assists in helping the East pull away for a 57-47 victory in front of a crowd of 3,137 at the Farris Center on the campus of the University of Central Arkansas.

“My teammates did a good job of getting me the ball,” White said. “My shots weren’t falling early, so I had to focus in on my defense. Coach always told me to focus on my defense because my offense would come.

“Luckily, I started making some shots and we were able to get the win.”

White’s performance wasn’t spectacular by her standards, but it was good enough to earn her most valuable player honors in the third-lowest scoring game in the event’s history. No other player scored 10 points or more for the East.

Tierra Coffey, Katelyn Weber and Raquel Logan each finished with six points.

Kamera Bozeman of Watson Chapel and Mary Crow of Bauxite each had 10 points for the West, which was looking to avenge last year’s 75-59 loss. But frigid shooting from the outside, coupled with a huge size disadvantage on the inside, stymied any chances of that happening.

“We just didn’t shoot it very well,” West Coach Charles Berry of Huntsville said. “We shot 3 of 27 from the three-point line, and that certainly didn’t help. They had so much size on us that we figured we had to shoot it well from the three-point line to have a chance. We just didn’t do it.

“But we had a great time with these kids. They worked hard and did everything that we asked them to do.”

The game was played with five seven-minute quarters instead of the normal four eight-minute quarter setup.

East Coach Jay Cook of Paragould said he figured the game would be somewhat sloppy considering the lack of time the coaches had to interact with their players. But he also said he was proud of the way his team performed despite several instances of sloppiness.

“It pretty much went about like I felt it would,” he said. “It was a sloppy game all around and we told the girls going in that it would be that way.When you have a group that has never played together before and very little time to prepare, it’s going to be hard.

“But we made just enough plays to pull it out and that says a lot about their effort. It’s been a special week and I’m just proud of the way they played.

Both teams had a tough time getting untracked on offense during the first two periods of play.

The East, which hit just 5 of its first 20 shots over the game’s first 14 minutes, misfired on its first seven attempts before Star City’s Tyeshia Harris connected on an 8-footer with 4:14 to go in the opening period. Harris would later add two short baskets over the next two possessions before White made a three-pointer with 53 seconds left in the period to give their team an 11-5 lead.

The West, despite committing a rash of turnovers early, managed to reel off 11 of the game’s next 13 points to grab its first lead since early in the first period. The West would eventually take an 18-16 lead into the third before the East began to exploit its size advantage inside, highlighted by Weber. The 6-5 center, who helped lead Little Rock Hall to the Class 6A state championship in March and has signed to play at Missouri State, scored six quick points during a 12-0 run to help her team open up the game’s first double-digit lead.

The East continued to hold a sizeable cushion throughout the rest of the half and well into the fourth period before the West briefly cut margin to two points with 2:51 left in the period. But Weber again scored inside to jump start another rally that the West never responded to.

Sports, Pages 26 on 06/21/2013

Upcoming Events