Bruins are one win away

By Dave Utnik

Published: March 11, 2008

RICHMOND — Shayla Drakeford collided violently with the Siegel Center floor Tuesday night and, for a few frightening seconds, the player who breathes life and passion into the Forest Park girls basketball team struggled to pick herself up.

The sound of her body crashing to the hardwood echoed loudly across the arena and the force of it brought head coach Rebecca Tillett racing down the sideline from the Bruins’ bench.

There were five minutes remaining in the Group AAA state tournament semifinal game and the Bruins were attempting to hang onto what had once been a comfortable 13-point lead over Princess Anne. Nobody wanted to have to do that without Drakeford in the lineup.

“Shayla’s the most important part of our team,” point guard Danni Jackson said. “She brings all the energy and the defense.”

Jackson provides a significant spark, too. She is the team’s best player and the one who has shouldered much of the leadership throughout Forest Park’s remarkable state championship quest. But Drakeford is the team’s soul and there’s no telling what might have happened if the Bruins had been forced to play the final frantic minutes without her.

Starting in place of George Mason University-bound Deidre Richardson, who is recovering from ACL surgery, Drakeford shook off the painful spill and came up with six of her nine points and the game’s two most significant defensive plays in the final 2 minutes 29 seconds as the Bruins held off Princess Anne for a 51-42 victory.

“She’s stepping in for a three-year starter in Deidre and she’s doing what she should be doing,” Jackson said. “She gets us hyped to play and keep going.”

Drakeford had already accomplished her primary goal by limiting Cavaliers’ point guard Raven Harris to 10 points — nine below her season average. But shutting down a star player who is headed to American University on a basketball scholarship was just the beginning of Drakeford’s contributions.

After the Cavaliers (29-2) closed to within two points with 3:20 remaining, Drakeford grabbed two of her team-high three steals, scored on a layup and hit four foul shots to help widen the margin back to eight. Then Jackson hit five of six free throws to reserve a spot in Friday’s 7 p.m. state championship game against Eastern Region champion Heritage.

“Princess Anne is a very formidable team and made quite a run against us but we just dug in our heels and said we’re going to be the ones who come out on top,” Tillett said.

Tillett was still coaching at Osbourn Park the last time the Bruins (25-4) faced Princess Anne in the state tournament. That was in 2005 when the Cavaliers rallied from a 15-point second-half defi-cit in the finals to pull off a stunning 59-52 win.

Senior guard Amber Epps was on that team and the memory still resonates.

“Last time, when I was a freshman, it was really devastating,” she said. “We just had to hold our composure because they were getting close to us and that’s what helped us.”

On Tuesday, the Bruins built a 32-19 advantage and then watched it slowly dwindle to two points. But this time they refused to surrender the lead behind another tenacious defensive effort that forced Princess Anne into a horrible 18-for-48 (37.5 percent) shooting night.

“This is what we’re born with,” Epps said of the Bruins’ defensive prowess.

The Cavaliers, who won 28 consecutive games before losing in the region finals to Heritage, were 1-for-9 from 3-point range and their three Division I-bound seniors — Harris, Tonya Clark and Kay Vick — combined for only 21 points on 9-of-29 shooting.

“I just guess our team wasn’t ready to play tonight until it was too late,” said Princess Anne coach Darnell Dozier, who hinted that he was looking for a coaching job in Northern Virginia and probably wouldn’t be leading the Cavaliers next season. “I think we had more turnovers tonight in the first half than we’ve had in a long time.”

The Cavaliers committed 14 of their 20 turnovers in the first half and scored a season-low 17 points. Things never really improved either.

Elizabeth Williams, a 6-foot-3 freshman center, led the team with 11 points, 13 rebounds and four blocks. But that wasn’t enough to overcome Drakeford’s defensive heroics or Jackson’s game-high 21-point performance.

“We had the height advantage and we didn’t take advantage of it,” Dozier said.

The Bruins didn’t allow that and wound up out-rebounding the Cavaliers 36-33. Epps finished with 11 points and six rebounds, Briana Scott pulled down five rebounds and Gerda Gatling added six points and nine rebounds

And having to deal with Jackson made things even worse for Princess Anne.

“She made so many moves that our kids were afraid to go for the block,” Dozier said. “We didn’t play defense on her very well.”

The Cavaliers tried to limit Jackson’s opportunities by having Courtney Braxton chase her around the court all night. But that strategy only had minimal success as the Bruins playmaker tallied 13 points in the second half.

“That was hard. She can play some defense,” Jackson said. “She played wonderful defense on me. I’ll give her that. It was just my teammates helping me when I needed them the most.”

And that included Drakeford, who returned to the game with just about three minutes remaining and ignited the decisive spark that prevented the Cavaliers from pulling off another comeback.

“We realized it was the fourth quarter and it could be our last game,” said Harris, who had Drakeford in her face all night and wound up going 4-for-12 from the field with four turnovers. “We definitely picked the intensity up but we did it too late.”