Deerfield-Windsor’s Lady Knights looking to go back-to-back
Lady Knights basketball hoping to win second straight state title
ALBANY, GA – Deerfield Windsor will be looking to bring the title back to Albany for the second consecutive year.
The lady Knights, who are riding a 14-game winning streak, will be dueling against Lakeview who only lost one game this whole year, and senior Joi Hubbard understands the urgency to tame the Lions.
“They’re a super tough team,” Hubbard said. “They are really disciplined and they’re a good team so I think we’ll just go into it as every game you know play our best and play our game and make adjustment in game. You know if they shift a defense we should shift our offense and basically just play off how they’re going to play us.”
If they Lady Knights can do what they did against Lakeview last year in the Final Four, they will join the Kansas City Chiefs and Georgia Bulldogs as back-to-back champions, and fellow senior Gabrielle Harris knows how special that moment could be.
“I think it’s obviously a lot of pressure if you think about it like that,” Harris said. “Every game we’ve gone into we’ve just said it like this is just like every other game like you play it like there’s not a game after and in this case like there’s not a game after, but just going into it focus and just playing our game and not letting the nerves like really affect us too much.”
This team is very different from last year’s group though, as they only have three seniors on the squad. Murphy Ray understands that the underclassmen will play a vital role to help them win the chip this year.
“Obviously, we have a really young team,” Ray said. “We lost a good amount of seniors last year. Two of them were starters and it just we definitely had like Gabby said a lot more people on the bench, but the underclassmen have definitely stepped up and I mean we’ve just been telling him from the beginning we’re like hey This isn’t going to be easy. Like we’re going to ask a lot from yall, but we need yall just as much as a part of this team as we are. So are you guys and they played their role. They’ve stepped up, they’ve been cheering so loud on the bench, they do everything they’re suppose to do. They are coachable and they just add so much joy to the team, I’d say.”
We all heard pressure burst pipes. The lady knights Head Coach Gina Mitchell who was hired in 2019 has a simple message before the big game.
“I think mainly play our game play defense like we have been playing all year long,” Mitchell said. “Don’t let them break their defense down, get to the rim as much as we can and shoot open shots when we’re open.”
The triple A region 3 championship game for all the marbles will be taking place in Columbus today, and we’ll have all your highlights after the game on our Facebook page, so be sure to check it out to see if the Lady Knights are coming home to add another trophy to their collection.
