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East Davidson has dusted off the evil demon that is the regional finals, and will be playing for the North Carolina High School Athletic Association 2-A state championship on Saturday at Reynolds Coliseum.
How they were able to do it is unexplainable.
East played one of its best games of the season to defeat a highly-touted Salisbury bunch 51-37 in the regional finals at the LJVM Annex Saturday evening. The final score is surprising enough, but even more surprising is they were able to do it with Anna Freeman scoring just six points.
So where exactly did the offense come from?
Try 5’5” sophomore guard Haley Grimsley. On one of high school basketball’s biggest stages, Grimsley was able to offset a zone defense from the Hornets down low on Freeman, connecting on 4-of-5 from 3-point range and 7-of-10 from the floor to score a game-high 23 points, earning tournament MVP honors. Not bad for a youngster who said she couldn’t hit anything during warm-ups.
“I was nervous the whole game. Until the last second,” Grimsley said.
Allmon could barely speak being so proud of the work his team put in. He didn’t have to. His demeanor said it all.
“This is about the greatest feeling I have ever had,” he said. “We have knocked on the door a couple times — this time it finally opened for us. Our defensive effort today was nothing short of spectacular. I am so happy for them, and I really can’t tell you how I feel. I can’t describe it.”
East struggled to put points on the board trailing 7-2 in the first quarter with Salisbury running a zone to take away Freeman inside. “Allmon could see the confusion from his team and burned a timeout to try and right the ship, and it paid immediate dividends.
Grimsley came out and promptly dropped in a 3 from the wing, and the East offense was back on track.
“We weren’t quite set up right in our offense,” Allmon said. “We had worked on our offense against the zone, and there were a couple little adjustments we had to make. And we did that in the timeout. Also, I wanted to settle them down a little bit. I thought we were awfully tense. I thought once they settled down we’d be OK.”
Junior guard Alyssa Cutshaw joined forces with Grimsley in the second quarter, with the two accounting for all 14 points to take at 21-14 lead into the half. Cutshaw’s 3-ball tied the game at 10-10 and Grimsley’s second trey of the night from the corner gave East the lead for good. Grimsley showed she could do it inside with a layup before heading back to the perimeter for one more trifecta. It was nothing but net for Cutshaw’s second 3, and all of a sudden the Hornets were starting to get shaken.
East then used an identical explosive third quarter to the one they had two nights before against Mitchell, only this time there would be no comeback.
Elizabeth Merritt laid the ball in and had a baby turnaround to fall to build a 25-14 lead and force Salisbury to call a timeout. It never solved the problem, though, as Salisbury scored just four points over the final five minutes of the third while East kept plugging away with 15.
At that point everyone on the Hornet side sat in stunned silence, looking up at the scoreboard to see a mind-boggling 40-18 lead for East. All that remained for the Golden Eagles was to run out the clock, because the game was over already judging by the looks on the Salisbury player’s faces.
“What am I supposed to be feeling,” said frustrated Salisbury coach Dee Miller. “We got beat. I’m feeling like we couldn’t put the ball in the basket.”
On the other side, it was a night Cutshaw has waited a couple years for in the post-game interview, after having Smoky Mountain knock the Eagles out of the regionals the past two seasons.
“We usually don’t want to come, because we are crying,” she said. “But this year, we are tired of crying.”
When asked if it was extra special to beat Salisbury to go onto the finals, Freeman, Cutshaw, Grimsley and Merritt answered with a synchronized, ‘Oh yeah!’
Freeman went on to put in perspective what made this time around so special.
“Our freshman year everybody called us the ‘Cinderella’ team because nobody really thought we were anything,” she said. “Last year everybody put the target on our back because we were ranked so high, so this year nobody knew what to expect from us and it feels good to surprise people.”
Merritt followed that up with a discovery the team made just a few days before at practice. Something that seemed to be missing on the wall.
“The other day at practice we looked up in our gym and there is room for one more state championship banner,” Merritt said. “We all just kind of got focused, and we all just refused to lose here tonight.”
Cutshaw (12 points), Freeman and Merritt (eight points) each made the all-tournament team. They were joined by Salisbury’s Shenequa Phifer who tallied 16 points and Shi-Heria Shipp who added six.