Nemo Vista wins third in a row

HOT SPRINGS -- Nemo Vista left Bank of the Ozarks Arena with an all too familiar feeling Friday night.

The Lady Red Hawks relied on its defense to battle back from a seven-point halftime deficit and beat Kirby 47-36 to win their third consecutive Class 1A state title in front of a sellout crowd of 6,500.

"Wow, what can you say. ... Three in a row," Nemo Vista Coach Kyle Payne said. "But what a group of girls. What they were able to accomplish, being down at halftime. The fight and the never giving up speaks wonders about this team."

Nemo Vista (38-3) trailed 25-18 at the half but held Kirby to 11 points on 2-of-13 shooting over the final two quarters. The Lady Trojans also turned the ball over seven times in the second half, several of which led to easy Nemo Vista baskets.

Junior guard Maggie Mahan scored 13 points to lead Nemo Vista, which has ended Kirby's season each of the past three years. Junior forward Sade Harrison added 11 points and six rebounds while winning MVP honors. Junior guard Adrianna Munoz finished with eight points.

The victory also allowed Nemo Vista to become the first team in any classification to win three state titles in a row since Fort Smith Northside won four consecutive from 1999-2002.

"You've got to give [Nemo Vista] credit for battling back like they did," Kirby Coach Robert Tucker said. "We shot it well in the first half, but in the second half, we were tentative on offense and weren't able to control the tempo like we wanted to. But you've gotta tip your hats to them.

"They did a great job of defense, and we just didn't execute."

Senior center Brooke Mitchell had 10 points and six rebounds for Kirby (38-3), which had its 26-game winning streak snapped. Senior forward Kallee Cowart added nine points and five rebounds.

Things were a bit dicey in the first half for Nemo Vista, which got off to a slow start offensively. The Lady Red Hawks took just 6 shots in the opening quarter and turned the ball over 3 times, then hit just 2 of its 8 shots in the second quarter.

While Nemo Vista struggled to find any kind of offensive rhythm, Kirby did not. The Lady Trojans were patient enough to find open shots with great success. Still, Kirby led just 19-18 with three minutes left in the half before Cowart scored the final six points for the seven-point lead.

"Let's just say I was a little mad at the half," Payne said. "They needed a fire lit under them, and that's the only thing I knew to do at the time. And that's what they got.

"The clipboard didn't break, but it was supposed to."

Payne's words worked.

The Lady Red Hawks scored the first 14 points of the third quarter and forced Kirby into turnovers on four of its first five possessions. Harrison's layup with 4:47 left tied the game at 25-25, and Jacie Andrews' three-pointer 28 seconds later gave Nemo Vista its first lead since early in the first quarter. The Lady Trojans didn't hit its first basket of the quarter until Cowart's floater with 2:28 to go.

Kirby didn't fare much better in the fourth. The Lady Trojans went the first 7:35 of the quarter without a field goal before Mitchell scored on a putback. By that time, Nemo Vista had established a 45-34 lead, one it was able to stretch out by going 13 of 18 from the free-throw line over the final eight minutes.

"The experience they've had in the past year, all of the 6A and 7A competition we've played really helped us in the second half," Payne said. "We were down, we were struggling. But we've faced it before, and the girls just so a great deal of character and resilience to come back and win it like they did."

Sports on 03/12/2016