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  • Matt Hamilton/The Daily Citizen Northwest Whitfield senior point guard Baleigh Coley passes under defensive pressure from Dutchtown’s Alyssa Strickland during their Class 4A state semifinal on Wednesday afternoon in Duluth. Northwest beat the Lady Bulldogs, 75-56, to secure a place in Friday’s championship. For more photos from Wednesday’s game, please visit pictures.daltoncitizen.com.

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March 11, 2010

On the brink of history

Lady Bruins roll to title matchup

Larry Fleming larryfleming@daltoncitizen.com

DULUTH — One more to go.

With a devastating inside-outside performance from Jordi Cook, Quaneisha McCurty and Christy Robinson, Northwest Whitfield dominated Dutchtown in a 75-56 win on Wednesday in the Class 4A girls state tournament semifinals to earn a spot in Friday’s championship game at the Arena at Gwinnett Center.

The Lady Bruins (29-3), who were ranked No. 1 in Class 4A at one time this season, will play Southwest DeKalb at 3 p.m. Friday for the title. The Lady Panthers beat Forest Park 61-55 Wednesday evening in the other semifinal.

Southwest DeKalb is trying to win its third consecutive state championship, while Northwest is in just its second title game in school history. The Lady Bruins’ first appearance came in 1990, when a Ron Wheeler-coached squad — current Northwest coach Margaret Stockburger was an assistant on that staff — lost 59-49 in the Class 3A championship.

“We’ve all worked long and hard for this,” said Cook, a senior guard who scored a career-high 27 points in a dazzling display of shooting prowess as she made 7 of 9 3-pointers, two shy of the school record set by Shanna Gentry. “We’re all excited to get to the championship game, but we’ve got to finish strong. We’re not done yet.”

Cook, who went into the semifinal showdown averaging about 12 points, was 5-for-6 on 3s in the second half, when the Lady Bruins outscored the Lady Bulldogs 48-33.

“We know she’s a capable shooter, but wow!” Stockburger said. “When she got the ball she was going to shoot it and knew she was going to make it. You could see it in her eyes. It was just amazing shooting.”

Dutchtown coach Angela Williams, a former Attack Apache helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army, saw her fears of Northwest’s inside-outside attack come to fruition as Northwest’s posts proved too much for the Lady Bulldogs. McCurty, a 6-foot-5-inch junior, had 19 points and Robinson, a 6-3 senior, added nine.

“Their height killed us in the first half,” said Williams, whose Bulldogs finished 27-3. “And what we didn’t want to happen — them to get hot on the outside — happened in the second half. (Cook) really got hot.”

The 5-8 Cook wrecked Dutchtown’s hopes of staying close after halftime.

Two free throws and a 3-pointer stretched the Lady Bruins’ lead to 32-25 with 6:10 left in the third quarter. Another 3 from Cook capped a 12-2 run that produced a 39-25 advantage at the quarter’s 3:12 mark.

And Cook was white-hot in the fourth before heading to the sideline with 45 seconds left in the game.

With 4:18 remaining, she nailed a 3 from the right corner, pushing Northwest into a 58-41 lead. A couple of minutes later she drilled back-to-back 3s from the left side and the Lady Bruins had a 67-48 edge with 2:02 left.

“She’s a good player,” Dutchtown’s Brittney Strickland said. “Any time she was open, she knocked it down.”

Cook scored 21 second-half points, with 11 coming in the fourth quarter. She has consistently shot in the 46-percent range from 3-point distance all season.

Strickland, a 5-5 guard, averaged 26 points a game for Dutchtown — the sixth-year school is located just south of Atlanta in Hampton — and did her best to keep her team within striking distance with a sterling 29-point effort.

“This is our best team ever,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of losing records, but we have to be happy with how we did this year. We wanted to go as far as we could, so we’re fine with this.”

Strickland and her twin sister, Alyssa, have both signed with Alabama A&M.

Abria Trice, the team’s second-leading scorer, added 12 points for the Lady Bulldogs. The champions from Region 4, they never led in the game and saw a 16-game winning streak come to its end.

Emily Trew had eight points and Baleigh Coley six for the Lady Bruins.

Kayla Piorkwoski came off the bench to score back-to-back baskets — striking quick is her forté — that allowed the Lady Bruins to break away from a 4-all tie for an 11-4 lead early in the game.

Northwest, which has won 28 of its past 29 games, had a 27-23 halftime lead. The Lady Bruins built an 18-7 lead when McCurty scored all six of her first-quarter points in the final 1:41 of the period. Brittney Strickland’s 3-pointer at the buzzer sliced Northwest’s lead to eight.

Dutchtown outscored Northwest 8-2 in the final 2:14 of the second quarter to pull within four at intermission, but the Lady Bulldogs scored just two points in the first 5:31 of the third quarter and that proved too much to overcome as Northwest zipped into a 29-25 lead.

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