FAIRLEA- After finishing the regular season 22-0 and ranked number 1 in Class AAA while playing arguably the toughest schedule in school history, the Greenbrier East Lady Spartans will start their run toward Charleston on Thursday night, February 26 when they host the Pikeview Lady Panthers in the opening round of the Class AAA, Region III bracket.
Greenbrier East comes into Thursday riding high, dealing seamlessly with injury adversity and with all focus on getting back to the state tournament.
They are already going to be without starting guard Sandy Banton for the rest of the year and backup center Regan Rink missed the last two regular season contests with a hamstring issue. Rink (44 percent FG, four rebounds per game) typically gives Hannah Fuller a breather in the middle and really picked up her play as the season went on and at the time of this writing cannot confirm if she will be ready to go or not.
But East have kept on trekking forward.
The Spartans are led in scoring by Ava Workman who pours in 19.7 points per game. The junior all-stater also gets 4.6 rebounds, 2.6 assists, and 2.3 steals. When she’s on the free throw line, she hits at a 76 percent clip as well.
Senior all-stater, and now second all-time leading scorer Kennedy Stewart is second on the team with 16.5 points and does that while normally being hounded on defense by her opponent’s night in and night out. Stewart also averages 4.8 rebounds, 4 assists, and 2.8 steals while knocking down 40.3 percent of her 3-point attempts.
Fuller is playing her best basketball of the season over the last couple weeks and for the year is averaging 7.2 points, 6.1 rebounds, and a team best 1.6 blocks. Fuller intimidates a lot of teams with her 6-foot-3 stature and is normally the tallest player on the floor each game.
Senior Mackenna McClure, who grabbed her 500th career rebound on senior night, will be critical to the Lady Spartans postseason run. The do-it-all forward scores 6.7 points per game, grabs a team-leading 6.7 rebounds, 2.5 assists, and just over one steal per contest.
With Banton out of the rotation, coach Jim Justice has turned to a combination of Kala Waller and Maddie Baker for the final spot in the starting five. Waller provides another outside shooting threat and hits from downtown 32 percent of the time and Baker brings a scrappy type of play with the ability to score if needed as evidenced by her five points against Princeton a week ago.
It will all begin this week.
Pikeview is just 1-17 on the season.
Some of their notable, rather interesting scores from this season are as follows.
Lost to James Monroe 104-22
Lost to Wyoming East 73-8
Lost to Logan 69-12
Lost to Princeton 93-14
Lost to Woodrow Wilson 91-12
Lost to Nicholas County 70-18
Their lone win was against Bluefield 41-37.
Tipoff Thursday night is set for 7:00 PM.
The girls Class AAA, Region III bracket:
