HUNTSVILLE — On paper, it was a bad matchup, Scott High vs. Seymour.
The Eagles, who some think can best Northview Academy as the top team in District 3-3A this year, had already beaten Union County by 50 — a team the Lady Highlanders had lost to over the Thanksgiving break. They’re fearsome from 3-point range and entered Tuesday’s (Nov. 30) game fresh off a 40-point win over Lenoir City.
Yet, with less than two minutes to play in the third quarter, Seymour found itself clinging to a 2-point lead against the Lady Highlanders, who looked poise to spring an upset.
That’s not the way the game finished. Seymour finished the third on a 6-0 run, then ran away with it in the fourth quarter, as Scott High ran out of gas.
The end result was a 48-27 win for Seymour in a game that looked like a blowout, but was actually a neck-and-neck battle for three quarters.
The Eagles struggled against Scott High’s zone defense for much of the game. The Lady Highlanders wanted to use man defense to take away the 3-point shot. Unable to do that, they settled into a zone and played it well, limiting the Eagles to three made 3-pointers through the first three quarters.
The trouble for Scott High was on the offensive end. After taking a 6-5 lead late in the first quarter, Scott didn’t score again until there was less than a minute remaining in the second quarter, when Julie Lewallen hit a 3-pointer from the corner that would prove to be the Lady Highlanders’ only points of that second stanza.
Meanwhile, Seymour opened up an 8-point lead at the halftime break.
The third quarter saw Scott slowly chip away at the lead, trimming it to 21-19 with less than two minutes remaining. Freshman Brittany Morrow scored four points, and the Lady Highlanders spread 10 points among four different scorers.
But Seymour would close out the third quarter on a 6-0 run, and carry that momentum to the fourth quarter. In fact, after scoring just 27 points through the first three quarters combined, the Eagles scored 21 in the fourth. Emma Watson scored nine of her 18 in the fourth, while Caiden Russell added seven of her 12 in the final period.
Alaina Duncan had seven to lead the Lady Highlanders in scoring.
Zoey Terry had a team-high seven rebounds, while Morrow had five steals.
SCOTT (27): Duncan 7, Morrow 6, Terry 4, Lewallen 3, Woodward 3, Young 2, Garrett 2.
SEYMOUR (48): Watson 18, Russell 12, Jarvis 4, Cummings 4, McCoy 4, Turner 3, Schultz 3.
