Lady Vikes advance to tournament title game|[2/16/06]
Published 12:00 am Thursday, February 16, 2006
MADISON – Lady Vikes, both young and old, teamed up to hand one last beating to their archrival.
Senior Amanda Doyle scored a career-high 25 points, freshman Sha’Kayla Caples dropped in 20, and Warren Central crushed Vicksburg 78-45 in the first round of the Division 3-5A tournament at Madison Central on Wednesday.
Keisha Collins led Vicksburg (12-16) with 12 points, while Tiffany Williams and Kamiko Martin netted 10 apiece.
Warren Central advanced to the tournament championship game on Saturday at 6 p.m. Its opponent will be Greenville-Weston, a 70-66 winner over Madison Central in Wednesday’s other first-round game.
WC will also play in next week’s Class 5A North State satellite game, and will host it with a win on Saturday.
“It’s always good to beat your rival, but the most important thing was to win this game no matter who it was so we could get out,” WC coach Donny Fuller said. “The person I’m most proud for is Amanda Doyle. She is the only senior we’ve got left out of a group that didn’t win a game as eighth-graders. And now she’s got a chance to go out as a division champion.”
Doyle and Caples powered Warren Central from the get-go.
Caples hit her first five shots and scored 10 points in the first quarter, while Doyle hit a pair of 3-pointers during a 10-2 run late in the period that gave the Lady Vikes the lead for good.
Doyle added another 3-pointer to key a run late in the first half that pushed WC’s lead into double digits, then scored 10 points in the third quarter as the advantage surged past 30 points.
Warren Central outscored Vicksburg 27-9 in the third quarter, taking a 64-30 lead by the end of the period. WC never led by less than 31 points in the fourth quarter.
“We just didn’t play ball,” Vicksburg coach Barbara Hartzog said.
Doyle was 3-for-3 on 3-pointers in the first half, 4-for-5 from the field overall, and 4-for-4 from the foul line.
Between them, Doyle and Caples went 17-for-22 from the field in the game. They also combined for 11 rebounds, six assists and three steals.
“Anytime we can go inside and out, it puts a lot of pressure on people,” Fuller said. “They both gave us a ton, no question about that. And then in the second half we had some other players step up and give us some big baskets.”