The prime time slot on championship Saturday again belongs to the Madison County High School girls’ basketball team.
The Lady Raiders (21-6) will advance to the 8-AAAA title game for the fourth straight year, facing Loganville (16-9) tonight (Saturday) at 7 p.m. at Monroe Area High School.
The Lady Raider seniors have reached the region championship every year in their careers.
“They don’t know any different,” coach Dan Lampe said. “They don’t expect to be playing in a 4 o’clock game (the consolation round). They expect to be in the 7 o’clock game Saturday night.”
Second-seeded Madison County clinched a spot in the region finals with a 50-35 victory over no. 1 seed Salem (23-4) Friday.
Madison County’s defense stymied the Lady Seminoles, holding Class AAAA’s sixth-ranked team to just 10 field goals the entire game.
“Tonight, I felt we played with a focused aggression,” said Lampe, whose Lady Raiders also beat Salem 58-39 Dec. 1. “That’s what I kept telling them, ‘focused aggression’ … They saw the ball. They helped on everything. They just took everything away.”
Lampe noted that Madison County’s lineup of four guards and just one post held up quite well against Salem’s three-post, two-guard set up.
“Our girls played big, big, big, on the boards,” Lampe said.
Offensively, Lauren Smith scored 15 points to lead the Lady Raiders to the victory. Shantydra Arnold and Kayla Freeman added 10 points each.
Meanwhile, Loganville upset Clarke Central to earn the other spot in the championship.
Though Madison County won’t get the chance to avenge its two regular season losses to Clarke Central, it is happy to have to chance to settle a score with Loganville in the title game.
The Lady Red Devils blasted the Lady Raiders 64-47 Dec. 15 in Danielsville. Loganville is the only other region team besides Clarke Central to beat Madison County this year.
“I’d love to play Loganville again,” Lampe said. “We welcome that. I mean, they came into our place and put the smack down on us … It’s going to take a lot of hard work and it’s going to be a completely different style game than this one.”
