1. Northwest Whitfield advances to Sweet 16
By Jeff Rancudo
TUNNEL HILL — Self-motivation is a wonderful thing.
Eager to bury the memory of letting the region tournament title slip away for the fourth straight
year, Northwest Whitfield’s Lady Bruins came out inspired and were never threatened in a 61-48
Class 4A first-round playoff win at home Tuesday night over St. Pius X Catholic.
In a bit of a surprise, the usually pass-happy Lady Bruins point guard Bria Clemmons showed
she can score plenty when needed. She racked up 16 of her 18 points and had three rebounds and
two steals in the first half and her teammates never let up either in the win. Northwest (23-5) will
travel 324 miles south to Jesup for its second-round matchup Friday versus Wayne County (also
23-5). Wayne County beat West Laurens 38-35 in its first-round game.
In Tunnel Hill on Tuesday, Northwest dominated inside and out early with six first-half 3-
pointers as it built a 35-17 halftime lead. Northwest coach Greg Brown, whose team lost to North
Hall in the opening round last year at home, said, “I’m just glad to be playing. It ain’t no big deal
now getting on the bus.”
“Obviously things didn’t go how we wanted for the fourth year in a row,” Brown said of the
second-place region tournament finishes. “And that gets old. That’s hard for kids. This senior
class finished second in the region tournament four years in a row. I can sit here and talk till I’m
blue in the face and tell them that it’s OK, that it doesn’t matter, blah, blah, blah. But it matters
to them. And I think they played like that from the opening tip.”
Clemmons not only became a scoring force Tuesday with two first-half 3s, but she got the ball to
teammates as Chandler Hiland and Holly Heath each swished a pair of 3s in the first two periods.
“I thought it was kind of an offensive coming out party for her tonight,” Brown said of
Clemmons. “She is very capable of doing that, but has not. She’s a distributor first. You guys
have seen it all year long. She’s a pass-first point guard. But I think she took on the mentality
tonight that we needed her to score baskets. She got some big ones for us early, no doubt about
it.”
Clemmons said she was happy to step up.
“We came back from that hard loss to Heritage in the region tournament,” Clemmons said. “Our
motto is just one more, one more game. We just try to play as hard as we can. I felt like I needed
to commit to my team to get the ball to the goal more, instead of just passing the ball. We kind of
tried to change up our defense a lot from a zone to a man to confuse them a little bit.”

2. Whitley Brooker scored 13 points to go with four rebounds, while Heath finished with 10 points
and four steals. Mary Kate Allen ripped down 10 rebounds and blocked four shots. Hiland
finished with nine points and Nicole Bates had five, including a 3.
“We didn’t have a long time to prepare,” Brown said. “We talked about defensively just doing
your job, talking to each other on defense, because we had film, but it’s just not a lot of time to
prepare when you go from Saturday to Tuesday. I thought we did a real good job on them
defensively tonight. We were going to have to guard them and rebound the ball. If we did those
two things, we’d win. And I thought that was key tonight.”
St. Pius (17-11) lacked answers from start to finish. Macey Carson scored 12 points to lead St.
Pius while Kathryn McKenzie scored 10 and Emma Drash contributed nine. Lady Golden Lions
coach Kyle Snipes sees Northwest doing well in the state tournament.
“(Clemmons) is a really, really good player,” Snipes said. “We wanted to really make her finish,
because some of the stuff we watched she struggled to finish. And we were going to lock up on
their shooters. A lot of good that did. She made some baskets and we got one of our better
defenders in foul trouble, (Leah) Middleton. So we had to mix and match on her. And that took
us out of our comfort zone.”
“They spread the floor so well. So you’ve got to almost pick your poison with that crowd. You
got three or four really good shooters. So we decided we weren’t going to let (Clemmons) beat
us. We weren’t going to let her drive in and kick out for 3s. And they did both,” added Snipes. “I
think they’ve got four seniors and they’ve bought into what their coach wants them to do. And
when they do that, it’s hard. They’ve got all the pieces that you need to make a good run. If they
continue to shoot the ball well they will be a tough out. They’re old and experienced. And I think
their experience with North Hall coming up here and getting after them and beating them, kind
of had them on alert tonight. Coach really did a good job of picking them up (after the Heritage
loss). I think this bracket matches up favorably for them. If they shoot the ball as well as they
had and defend like they did here tonight they’re going to be a tough out.”