CHARLESTON, W.Va. — No. 5 Sissonville led wire-to-wire against Fairmont Senior, but Class AA’s top-seeded team didn’t go down quietly.
Trailing by 12 in the fourth quarter, guard Emily Stoller scored nine unanswered points to make it a one-possession game before Brittany Gould sank a jumper to squash the comeback and give Sissonville the 48-40 upset.
The Indians (23-3) advanced to meet No. 2-seeded Westside in the Class AA state finals on Saturday at noon.
“These girls are just competitive,” Sissonville coach Rich Skeen said. “They brought it today and could have panicked down at the end, but they stepped us and made key plays.”
Sissonville lost to Fairmont Senior 76-61 earlier in the season, but this time the Indians bolted out to a 13-0 lead.
“I think we just came out with energy,” said Gould, who finished with 17 points and 15 rebounds. “We really wanted to make it to the final round, so we came out ready to play.”
Sissonville also received 17 points from Madison Jones to go along with Karli Pinkerton’s 12 points and nine rebounds.
Fairmont Senior (21-2) had won 21 consecutive games but was playing only its second since losing top scorer Kaden Whatley to a knee injury in the regional. Stoller tried to pick up the slack with 20 points and nine rebounds, including her late flurry that pulled the Polar Bears to within 43-40.
“I just tried to keep (Stoller) in front and not let her get by me,” said Pinkerton. “I tried to just make her pull up and shoot jumpers.”
“We told the girls at halftime that (Stoller) could take over,” Skeen said. “We can’t stop her—we have 5-3 and 5-5 players guarding her the whole game. But other than that one run, to me, she never got in a rhythm.”
Erica Bowles finished with six points and grabbed nine rebounds for Fairmont.
The Polar Bears controlled the boards 50-38, with four players grabbing at least nine rebounds. But Fairmont Senior was undone by 23-percent shooting, including just 3-of-19 from 3-point range.
“Down here numbers don’t matter; if a team matches your intensity that’s when you have to trust in your system,” Fairmont Senior coach Corey Hines said. “We started to do some things out of character, we didn’t trust it, it makes a big difference.”
Senior forward Kelsey Morrone, one of those players with nine rebounds, explained that the start is what hurt her team the most tonight.
“They had a desire to win, they came out on that run and wanted it more than we did,” Morrone said. “We didn’t start kicking in our game until the second quarter, which really hurt us.”