Kirby does it again

Mar. 7—BRENTWOOD — Aubrey Blankenship is the leading scorer in the short history of Green Hill girls basketball having just passed the 1,500-point mark and is the focal point of opposing defenses.

But it's classmate Savannah Kirby who has the two biggest baskets in Lady Hawks' history.

A year after her dropback 3-pointer stunned undefeated Cookeville in the District 9-4A championship game, Kirby repeated her shot from the wing with 1.1 second left to complete Green Hill's improbable trip to the state tournament with a 36-33 sectional upset of host Brentwood last Saturday night.

"It wasn't 'Hey, 14, Savannah Kirby, I need you to shoot this 3', it was 'Somebody's gotta make a play right here'," Kirby said. " 'We need somebody to score to win the game'. The girls on my team are confident whenever anyone has the ball in their hand. I'm grateful they are so confident in me to have the ball in my hands.

"The last game, Aubrey had a lot of our points and a lot of us didn't even really shoot the ball. We held the ball a lot. This game, (Coach Joseph Simmons) is like 'somebody else has to step up for us to win'. I think a bunch of different people stepped up on both ends of the floor."

"That just shows the confidence these girls have," said Simmons, who coached Goodpasture to the Division-II state before coming to Green Hill this season. "You got to make those kind of plays to get to the Glass House. It isn't easy. You gotta be healthy. We're down a starter (sophomore Julia Varpness with a broken arm sustained in the district semifinals against Lebanon). And you got to catch some breaks and we caught some breaks. And you got to make plays at the right time and we've done that down the stretch."

The shot put the Lady Hawks into their first state tournament game at 6 p.m. today against Clarksville at Middle Tennessee State's Murphy Center.

The basket also gave Green Hill a 17-16 record as the Lady Hawks will try to slip on the glass slipper inside the Glass House.

"It's been a roller-coaster of a season," Simmons said. "You can look at our record. It doesn't look the greatest but we played a heck of a schedule. It prepared us for this moment. These seniors did not want it to end here. We've been talking about getting to the Glass House. We knew it wasn't going to be easy, but it was possible. As long as there's an opportunity, there's a chance."

It appeared 25-win Brentwood would be the team playing tonight (or tomorrow as half of the 4A quarterfinals will be played Wednesday) as the Lady Bruins pitched a 7-0 second-quarter shutout to turn a 10-10 back-and-forth first quarter into a 17-10 halftime lead.

But after falling behind 20-10 early in the third quarter, Green Hill suddenly scored 16 straight points. Three-pointers by Allyssa Potier and Sullie Gerik got the Lady Hawks back into the contest.

Blankenship, held scoreless after a six-point first period by the hounding defense of Charlotte Lambright, hit a pullup jumper from the key to pull GHHS even at 20-20 and her layup just past the halfway mark of the period put the West Wilson visitors ahead for the first time since 10-8 at 22-20.

It was 26-20 before Brentwood could stop the bleeding. The Lady Bruins never led again, but had several chances both at the basket and the free-throw line to tie or even take the lead. Meanwhile, Green Hill ran time off the clock on offense.

Brentwood finally pulled even at 33-33 with 56.6 seconds left on two free throws by Ella Ryan, who gave Green Hill's defense fits in the first quarter with her drives to the basket and led the Lady Bruins with 17 points. Following a Green Hill timeout with 48.7 seconds left, the Lady Hawks whittled the time down to Kirby's 3 from the wing. By the time Brentwood could get a timeout, just 1.1 second remained.

A long inbounds pass set up a tying triple which missed as Hawk Nation stormed the court.

"Just couldn't be more happy for the kids," Simmons said. "We made plays. We got that lead late and we blew it, we let them tie it.

And we could have folded, and earlier in the year we would have. But our players never folded. They wanted to win and they didn't make mistakes. They made the plays at the end."

Blankenship led the Lady Hawks with 14 points while Potier put in seven in the second half, Gerik five, Cameron Bryan four in the second half and Kirby and Chezney Whipker a 3 apiece.