By Dalton Middleton
Special to The Dispatch
WEST POINT – Amari Heard and Aamiya Rush were not going to let the West Point girls’ baskebtall team get knocked out of the second round of the Mississippi High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) 5A state playoffs like last season’s team.
Heard and Rush led the Lady Wave to a dominating 65-33 win over the Canton Tigers with suffocating defense and rebounding. The score was no indication of how lopsided the game was, as the Lady Tigers scored 13 points down the stretch in the fourth quarter when the game was very far out of reach.
West Point (19-5) advances to Jackson where it will need three wins for a state championship. The first opponent is West Jones (23-2) at 7 Friday night at the Mississippi Coliseum.
Head coach Dashmond Daniel said his team played outstanding on the defensive side of the ball, and the team plays defense the style their bodies allow them to.
“My team likes to go fast and I can’t slow them down,” Daniel said. “So they don’t like sitting in a 2-3. We are long so that benefits us but I’ve learned as a coach that I have to compromise with my team. I’d love to sit back and suffocate teams at half court. We do a great job. We are long, quick and athletic. It’s kind of hard not to let them go.”
The Green Wave dominated on the boards as well. Outrebounding the Lady Tigers by 16, West Point stacked up 33 rebounds on the night. The leading rebounder was double-double machine Rush, who put up 12 points and 14 rebounds.
Heard, the team’s leading scorer, said that Rush is the reason the team has the spark on the floor that they did tonight. She said she helps lead the team and securely grab the rebound. She always feels safe that Rush will come down with the ball.
“That’s always Rush,” Heard said. “Always grabbing rebounds every game. She is such an electric player.”
Coach Daniel also complimented Rush on bringing the energy the team needs every game, especially when she has only been playing basketball for a little amount of time.
“She’s my energy girl,” Daniel said. “She’s young. She doesn’t know much about basketball since she has only been playing for two years. All she knows is to go rebound and push the ball up the court. She’s a very young girl.”
Daniel said his team did play well, but to beat the top-ranked West Jones next week, they are going to need to rebound much better than they did tonight.
“I actually thought we didn’t do a good job of rebounding tonight,” Daniel said. “We missed a lot of box outs. They got a lot of offensive rebounds and I do not like offensive rebounds. They just missed a lot of shots. If you look at the shots they missed, this game would have been a ball game. Luckily, we grabbed a lot of rebounds the second and third time they came down.”
On the offensive side of the ball, West Point handed the ball to Heard over and over again, who had no problems scoring. She led the team with 24 points and eight rebounds, with most of her points in the paint. From start to finish, she was the go to player for the Green Wave.
Heard dominated the opening quarter. She led West Point on an 8-0 run to start the game and gave her team to a 15-8 lead at the end of the first quarter. She single handedly out scored the Canton Lady Tigers 9-8 and grabbed three rebounds as well.
Rush said Heard got the team going to the great start they needed, and she enjoyed watching her finish inside the paint drive after drive.
“On almost every rebound I caught, I saw her running down the court for the fast break,” Rush said. “I’d chunk her the ball and she’d score easily. She got me a few assists tonight doing that. She just kept driving and knocking down shots.”
Heard was fouled five times in the second quarter and turned the free throws into seven points. She helped lead her team to a healthy 26-13 lead at halftime. That lead quickly opened up for West Point.
The third quarter started slow for Heard and company, but their defense allowed them to put up 17 points while only allowing five, and extended their lead to a devastating 43-18 margin. The fourth quarter was no different and the team easily cruised to the win. Lady Tiger Deshuntaenae Sykes scored 10 point in the fourth quarter to try and get her team back in the game, but she had no such luck cutting into the deficit.
Daniel said the team is practicing over three hours a day some days. He wants to be over prepared, not under prepared. The hard work is now paying off.
Heard followed along with that statement and said she enjoys practicing that long every day. She said the team needed to play with that intensity and that preparation to meet their goal they set, and exceed past it.
“I’m so excited to be playing in the third round,” Heard said. “This is all we have been working for. Last season, we got put out in the playoffs in the second round, so our goal was to get past this round.”
Rush followed with that statement with a demanding statement of her own.
“I’m ready,” Rush said. “Bring them on.”
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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