Menu
Naylor girls basketball team advances to Class 1 state final
COLUMBIA, Mo. -- It had been almost a year since the Naylor and Walnut Grove girls basketball teams met at state when a sense of déjà vu fell over the Hearnes Center.
In a rematch of last season's MSHSAA Class 1 championship game, it was Naylor's turn to let a 10-point lead dwindle down to single digits.
Only this year the Lady Eagles flipped the script.
Naylor knocked down 7 of 10 from the free-throw line in the fourth quarter and held the Lady Lions in check to gut out a 37-32 victory Thursday.
The Lady Eagles (23-7) advance to the state title game for the second straight year and will play Mound City (29-1) at 6:20 p.m. Saturday at Mizzou Arena. The win also ends Walnut Grove's three-year run as state champions.
"Oh, you better believe we remember that loss and it was sweet to come back," Naylor coach Gene Deckard said. "The media was playing it up as a championship rematch in the semifinals and that's about as good a rematch as you can have.
"They had a great run, they're a great team, but we're pleased that we could be the one to bring it to an end."
Naylor led 20-12 at halftime and looked to be cruising a minute and a half later.
After Hannah Cunningham picked up her fourth foul a minute into the third quarter, freshman Lexi Day checked in and knocked down her only basket of the night on a 3-pointer.
Free throws by Walnut Grove (22-10) cut the lead to 23-16 before sophomore Callee Pickrell completed a three-point play to give Naylor its largest lead of the game, 26-16.
Three straight turnovers and a missed shot attempt followed as the Lady Tigers mounted their comeback.
"We came down and forced a little bit, made a couple errant passes," Deckard said. "They came down and made a couple big plays. That's why they've won it three years in a row.
"They weren't going away easy, but we were here to battle them to the end."
Walnut Grove closed out the third on an 8-2 run and tied the game at 28 on four straight points from senior Bayley Harmon to open the fourth.
With 5:01 remaining, Pickrell knocked down two of her game-high 17 points on a pair of free throws to give Naylor the lead for good.
"It felt a lot better than last game," Pickrell said. "Kind of got to show off a little more than last game and last year."
But on her 17th birthday it was Cunningham's trip to the charity stripe that provided the go-ahead points for the Lady Eagles. The junior made both on a one-and-one to extend the lead to 32-28 with 1:16 to play.
"Best birthday present ever," Cunningham said. "I knew I couldn't like pick up any stupid fouls and I had to be there for my team down the stretch."
Kabrien Rogers' turn-around jumper a minute later made it 34-28 before Harman answered with a layup.
Walnut Grove was without its tallest player, Raylie Hejna for much of the fourth and had no choice but to go to the hot hand of Harman on several of its possessions down the stretch.
The senior finished with 14 points to pace the Lady Tigers but only one possession was successful in the final minute due in large part to Chelsey Rigdon's defense up front.
"I brought miss defense in over here, Chelsey Rigdon," Deckard said. "We knew Henja had fouled out and it was going to go to Harmon so we went to a triangle-in-1, face-guarded and for a minute, minute and a half they got nothing.
"We had a great effort defensively down the stretch."
Cunningham and Pickrell combined to score the final three free throws for Naylor before Harman set the final score with an uncontested layup.
"These girls have never known anything but a state championship so you hate for it to end the way it did," Walnut Grove coach Rory Henry said. "They gave it everything they had, kept coming back in through all the injuries."
Walnut Grove found itself down 9-6 at the end of the first quarter but its greatest deficit was the injuries it had to overcome.
In all, four Lady Tigers went down but none was bigger than Hejna's
"Just an ankle sprain I think, I'm not really even sure what it was," Hejna said. "I just knew I had to come back, this could be my last game and it turned out to be."
She returned momentarily but was never the same.
Naylor, meanwhile, used an 11-6 run to take an eight-point lead into the break.
"I felt like from the first whistle, our girls came ready to play," Deckard said. "Last year we were kind of in awe, big-eyed. Really we didn't start playing until the third quarter last year."
The road to get back here hasn't been as easy as some would've projected.
But Deckard always knew it wasn't far-fetched as long as his annual philosophy of beefing up the schedule paid off.
"For a Class 1 schedule, we beefed it up even more this year with Incarnate Word, Dexter that's ranked Class 4 top 10 and Class 5 Jackson," Deckard said. "So we don't play a typical Class 1 schedule, we don't pay much attention to our record coming in here and we're just used playing with the big girls to prepare for the big games."
| Naylor | 9 | 11 | 8 | 9 | -- | 37 |
| Walnut Grove | 6 | 6 | 12 | 8 | -- | 32 |
NAYLOR (23-7) -- Gargac 0-3 (0-3) 0-0 0. Rigdon 1-1 (1-1) 0-2 3. Rogers 3-4 0-1 6. Cunningham 2-7 4-6 8. Pickrell 4-14 (1-2) 8-11 17. Day 1-2 (1-2) 0-0 3. Davis 0. Totals: 11-31 (3-8) 12-20 37.
WALNUT GROVE (22-10) -- Harman 5-13 (0-6) 4-5 14. McPhail 3-8 0-0 6. Henja 4-10 2-4 10. Dodson 0-2 (0-2) 0-0 0. Miller 1-2 0-0 2. McVay 0-1 (0-1) 0-0 0. White 0. Verbeck 0. Totals: 13-36 (0-9) 6-9 32.
REBOUNDS: Naylor 23 (Pickrell 5. Cunningham 4. Rogers 3.) Walnut Grove 27 (Hejna 8. Miller 7. McPhail 6.) ASSIST: Naylor 5 (Rigdon 2.) Walnut Grove 9 (McPhail 4. Harman 3.) STEALS: Naylor 8 (Pickrell 3. Gargac 2.) Walnut Grove 6 (Harman 3. McPhail 2.) BLOCKS: Naylor 2 (Rogers. Pickrell.) Walnut Grove 1 (Hejna.) TURNOVERS: Naylor 14. Walnut Grove 12. FOULS: Naylor 12. Walnut Grove 16. (Fouled out: Harman. Hejna.)