If Charlottesville girls’ basketball coach Jim Daly ever needed a made free-throw to tie the score in the fourth quarter of a game, he would likely breathe a sigh of relief knowing that senior guard Vanessa Antwi would be the one to attempt the foul shot.
As fate would have it, that is the exact scenario in which Daly and the Knights found themselves in on Tuesday against Fluvanna. Fresh off of a hard-earned and-1, Antwi stepped to the charity stripe to attempt to knot the game at 40.
To the surprise of many, the free throw clanged off the rim, but the miss was the best thing that could have happened to Antwi and the home team.
After resetting the offense, Antwi faked out her defender and delivered the go-ahead bucket with 46 seconds left on the clock.
CHS fed off of the momentum of Antwi’s four consecutive points and never trailed again en route to a 45-42 win over the visiting Flucos.
Antwi scored 10 of her season-high 16 points in the second half, including the huge swing that gave her team the lead.
“It was just ‘Hustle to the ball.’ We knew [Fluvanna] was a very fast-paced team, so we knew that if we didn’t put our effort in that it’s going to get stolen or tipped their way… so it was just ‘Hustle to the ball’ and I ended up doing that.”
Charlottesville (4-0) closed the game on a 13-4 run over the final 3:30 of regulation in a complete reversal of what had happened in the previous seven minutes of play. Fluvanna built an eight-point lead on the back of it’s pressure defense and limited Charlottesville to just one field goal in the quarter’s first 4:30. Lakia Thompson went 1-2 from the line to finally stop the bleeding for the Black Knights, but they still trailed by three possessions.
The Black Knights slowly clawed their way back into the game by limiting turnovers and finally figuring out the zone that Fluvanna had implemented to start the fourth quarter.
Back-to-back jumpers by Rayquel Allen pulled the Knights to within three. Allen attempted to tie the game with a long three-pointer at the top of the key, but Antwi would secure the rebound and set the stage for her two biggest field goals of the game.
After Antwi seized the lead for Charlottesville, Thompson came up with a big-time steal with under 30 seconds to play. Thomason then found a streaking Allen, who polished off her team-best, 17-point outing with a jumper to put the Knights ahead by three.
“I thought we played smart down the stretch — we knew when we needed to press and when we needed to trap,” Daly said. “We’re super blessed with a lot of senior backcourt players, plus [Allen] who plays well beyond her years. I thought we did a good job of managing the final five minutes… I’m really proud of how our girls took care of it down the stretch.”
Sophomore Makiaya Brown secured the rebound that led to Antwi’s go-ahead runner and a miss off of a front-end of a one-and-one down the stretch, so it was only fitting that she was able to tally Charlottesville’s final two points from the foul line with 26 seconds left.
Thompson managed just three points on the night, but she did about everything else for the Black Knights. The senior grabbed 14 rebounds, recorded four takeaways, and dished out a pair of assists.
“[Thompson] is about the smartest basketball player I’ve ever coached,” Daly said. “So many times, you can catch her eye, and she’s already nodding- she’s knows what to do next. It’s great having her out there. I thought she had a tremendous fourth quarter. Her shots weren’t falling, but she was all over the boards… She does a lot of stuff to win games, and we’re lucky to have her.”
Fluvanna jumped out to a 12-3 advantage in the game’s opening minutes, and maintained a slim lead up until the third quarter.
Antwi scored six points in a 7-0 Charlottesville run that saw the Black Knights build a 28-24 lead.
The run came at a particularly poor time for Fluvanna, as star guard Aniah Webb took a seat with foul trouble for the final 3:19 of the third quarter.
Webb’s backcourt mate Alana Carter-Johnston picked up the slack in the former’s absence, by scoring six-straight Fluvanna points, to tie the game at 30.
Junior Harley Kirby then wrestled the ball away under the Charlottesville basket and laid it in to give the Flucos the lead once again heading into the fourth quarter.
Fluvanna scored eight of the first 10 points of the final stanza to cap a 14-4 run and stretch out to a 40-32 lead heading into game’s closing minutes. After playing their best basketball of the night in the late-third and early-fourth quarters, things went south for the Flucos on both offense and defense
The shots stopped falling on offense, and Charlottesville took better care of the ball, which prevented turnovers and easy buckets. On the other side of the court, Charlottesville was able to find weak spots in Fluvanna’s zone, which enabled the Knights to retake control of the game.
“I’m a little bit mad at myself for going zone as long as I did,” Fluvanna head coach Nick Ward said. “We went on like an 8-0 run in the zone, and I felt like, ‘If it’s not broke, don’t fix it’, but looking back at how we play and who we are, I regret sticking with it.”
Carter-Johnson led Fluvanna with 14 points, while Webb chipped in nine.
