By Erik Harris
TRUSSVILLE – No. 2 Clay-Chalkville led Gadsden City for six seconds in the semifinals of the New Year’s Shootout at Bryant Bank Arena on Monday.
Senior Kristian Hudson went to the foul line for a pair that gave the Lady Cougars their first lead of the game at 44-43 with only six ticks remaining.
Haley Troup took the ensuing inbound up the floor, planted her feet five paces behind the arc and fired a prayer that was bound for the bottom of the net. The final buzzer went off midway through the ball’s flight, but its sure path between the cylinder was obvious well before that.
“We had two starters foul out so I knew that it would obviously be me that would have to take the shot,” said Troup. “I just kind of let it fly a little bit outside the 3-point line and it went in.”
The silent crowd watched the ball fight its way through the net as the final score flipped to 46-44 in favor of the Lady Titans. Troup credited her teammates for the win.
“It was really a team win, the last shot just happened to be to me,” Troup said.
Losing in that fashion was hard for many reasons. The Lady Cougars’ late lead had been pursued for at least 30 minutes of play, as they started the contest on the wrong side of a 7-0 run that was built in the opening two minutes. That lead was never fully overcome until Hudson’s free throws.
Every time Clay-Chalkville made a charge and worked its way back into the game, the road team would answer to keep Hudson and Co. at a safe distance.
“I kept telling the kids, ‘We will go on our run, too,’” said Clay-Chalkville head coach Justin Haynie. “They hit a lot of shots in the first half and I kept telling them to fight, stay in the game and they did. I told them in the locker room that I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
T.J. Thomas finished on a transition lay-in with two minutes left in the first half to pull the Lady Cougars to within two. Gadsden City stretched it back out to six before intermission and grew it to 10 one minute into the third.
But Clay-Chalkville wouldn’t throw in the towel. Summer Pettway scored her second 3-pointer of the game to help cut that lead in half going into the final eight minutes.
In the midst of it all, Hudson gathered a game-high 19 points, which was good enough to bump her career total up over 2,000 points scored. She was the first girls basketball player to eclipse the 1,000-point mark in school history as a sophomore.
The senior, holding a congratulatory chocolate cake, said the second 1,000 points feel like a much greater accomplishment.
“It’s a greater feeling, you always want to try to get better at something that you’re doing and I feel progress is there, I feel like I’m helping my teammates out by being a threat,” said Hudson.
Despite the great milestone, there was a feeling coming off Hudson and her team; a sureness that that cake would’ve tasted much better if not for Troup.
“We don’t like losing, but stuff like this can make you better and I think our kids are smart enough and disciplined enough to know that,” Haynie said.