MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — After being held to three points in the first half, Frankfort guard Maria Perdew led the Falcons to the state tournament with a second-half surge.
Perdew finished with 17 points and teammate Halley Smith scored a game-high 20 on Thursday, as the Falcons won the Class AA Region II title with a 60-48 victory against Trinity.
“Perdew is their best player. She had 28 against us when we played them earlier in the season,” Trinity head coach Mike Baldy said. “She got going in the second half and we had a really bad third quarter. We sort of lost our minds in the third quarter and shot ourselves in the foot and the turnovers mounted.”
Trinity (8-7) held a 26-22 halftime lead, but Frankfort took a 46-37 lead heading into the fourth quarter.
“The problem we ran into was we had played a great first half as the underdogs,” Baldy said. “I didn’t want to go into halftime and start changing a bunch of things, because what we were doing on defense was working. Looking back on it now, I’m a little upset with myself, because maybe we should have gone to a different zone or something.”
Smith scored 12 of her 20 from the foul line.
“She’s a really nice point guard for them,” Baldy said. “She made a big difference and if Frankfort got an offensive rebound, they were looking to kick it back out to her.”
Tinsly Grove added 14 points for Frankfort, which earned the No. 4 seed in next week’s Class AA state tournament.
Trinity was led by Jaclyn Smith, who finished with 12 points in her final high school game.
“She struggled a bit on offense, but some of that was probably because she was focusing so much on guarding Perdew,” Baldy said. “She really played so hard tonight. She played her heart out.”
Freshman point guard Jenna Barnett added eight points for Trinity.
