8th Grade Girls- North Habersham vs. Madison County (1/18/11 5:15pm)

North Habersham's 8th Grade Lady Bobcats were in action this evening as they were taking on Madison County for this last home game during their regular season. The bobcats would be missing one player that has had a major scoring effort on their team this year, Schyler Miller (#22), suffering a fractured right wrist in a previous game. The bobcats would show that one player would not have an effect on the team's ability to operate. Opening up the 1st quarter the Bobcats showed that they would also need to put together a new offensive plan as they trailed Madison 14-10 at the end of the 1st quarter. The 2nd quarter was a loud, diverse, and interesting quarter in what some would call the wildest quarter in North Habersham Basketball history. North was in the process of making a tie game while Madison was still trying to find their defense with 2:26 left in the 1st half. Madison scored 7 points and North Habersham scored 5 points in a huge quarter-long battle. Late in the 1st half the Bobcats were scoring back to back points and had scored twice (Including a 3 pointer) within 32 seconds to go when injured player, Schyler Miller made a trip off the bench and over to the Clock Operator to ask how many fouls a certain player had. As soon as she went to sit back down a referee blew his whistle and signaled a technical foul against the Bobcats. Come to find out, Mike Ray and Miller were both standing up and were both considered as "coaches" and a "coaches technical foul" was signaled with 21.1 seconds remaining on the clock. The stands went from loud to deafening when the foul was signaled as the Bobcat fans were in disbelief. So Madison's #12 made a free-throw to make the score 29-23 at the half. North came back out of the locker room with one mission; seek and destroy. The Bobcats scored 16 points in the 3rd quarter and only let Madison gather 5 points. With the Bobcats leading for the first time in the game they would not allow Madison to take the lead back but keeping the score close enough to keep the fans on the edge of their seat. North totaled 13 more points in the 4th quarter and allowed Madison to score 6 points in what was a surprising comeback for the Lady Bobcats, winning the game 52-40. Both teams agreed by the end of the night that the referees were far from the best as both stands wanted an explanation from the referees disputable calling at the end of the night. The player of the game (elected by Players, Coaches and Stat Keepers) was North Habersham's Stormi Abernathy (#24), scoring 24 points. The 8th Grade Lady Bobcat's next game is at South Habersham this Friday at 5:15PM.