Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, December 4, 1993 TAG: 9312040156
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: BOB TEITLEBAUM STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
At the same time, the Buffaloes gave their coach, Alan Cantrell, a chance to erase the memory of one of his most painful losses.
Cantrell's Floyd County squad stormed past outmanned Thomas Walker 89-40 in a Group A semifinal at the Salem Civic Center.
That sets up a championship game at 1 p.m. today between the Buffaloes (28-1) and Buffalo Gap, a 43-35 winner over Madison County.
It was nine years ago that Cantrell's Floyd County team, in its only other state final appearance, was upset by Buffalo Gap.
"Yes, I remember," Cantrell said with a smile. "The girls know about it. They've known for a long time."
Cantrell said he and his team started thinking about a potential meeting with Bufalo Gap when they played the Bisons at a summer camp.
"The talk was that they had the best team in the [Skyline] District and might come out of their regional," Cantrell said.
"We kept up with them as the season progressed. The kids have even watched a tape of that [1984 championship] game, and they keep kidding me about the funny uniforms we wore [short pants were in style]."
If Floyd County was thinking ahead, it wasn't apparent Friday. The Buffaloes led 4-2 with six minutes left in the first quarter. With 2 minutes, 59 seconds left, Floyd County's press had forced the Pioneers into all sorts of turnovers and the Buffaloes led 25-2.
"We had to work harder because of the bigger floor. But our press still works," said point guard Monica Lucas, who had seven assists and five steals.
"We surprise ourselves a lot of times. I didn't know we could do this [score points so quickly]. We haven't done this before. Sometimes I wish I could just sit and watch us play."
Sonny Brooks, Thomas Walker's coach, was the least surprised person in the building after the game.
"We thought if we could get past the first line of their press, we could do something," Brooks said. "But we couldn't get past that first line.
"We haven't run into any team who has a 6-footer who can hit a 3[-pointer, and Floyd County has two in Lynette Nolley and Carrie Chaffin]. We couldn't match up with them anywhere."
Nolley finished with 12 points, but she played very little because of foul trouble. Brennan O'Neil led the Buffaloes with 18, one more than Chaffin, who will be one of the players to fill Nolley's spot next year.
Those three and the rest of the Floyd County players showed that a bigger floor than the Buffaloes play on during the regular season doesn't affect their game. Not only did the press work, but Floyd County connected on 34-of-67 field-goal attempts.
"We went to practice at Virginia Tech on Wednesday. We had to run the floor and we got used to it," Nolley said.
Buffalo Gap will be the tallest team to play Floyd County since the Buffaloes beat Lord Botetourt in the second game of the regular season.
"We know we have to block out really strong, but we have the height to hit the boards really hard," Nolley said.
Records continued to mount for Floyd County. For the second consecutive game, the Buffaloes set a state tournament scoring mark when J.J. Sowers hit a 3-point shot at the buzzer to top by one point the 88 scored by Floyd in the first round.
Thomas Walker (21-6) had no double-figure scorer and was down 51-14 at the half. After intermission, Cantrell called off the press and substituted liberally.
In Friday's first semifinal, Buffalo Gap (24-2) beat Madison County (24-4) for the fourth time in five meetings. Sarah McNett, a 5-11 forward, scored 13 points and 6-0 Wendy Layman added 11.
Looking back nine years, Cantrell said this championship game will be different in style.
"We liked to pound the ball inside in those days and didn't press nearly as much," he said. "One of the players [on that 1984 team], Marcia Price, asked me which team was better." Cantrell didn't answer that question. \
see microfilm for box score
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.