Decatur High Girls End Season With 55-47 Loss To Heard County

Decatur High’s girls saw one of the best seasons in school history suddenly squeezed shut Friday night.

Despite Queen Alford’s 27 points, Decatur dropped a 55-47 decision to Heard County in Franklin in the first round of the state playoffs.

For a team that’s spent nearly the entire season in the state’s top 10 (Decatur’s currently ninth), and finished the regular season with a number two seed in the state’s showcase region (Region 6-AA), the loss to unranked Heard was a bitter pill.

“I’ve been coaching 11 years, but it never gets any easier losing the game that ends your season," said Decatur coach Bill Roberts. "I’m very disappointed. I felt we could go a lot further this year. The good news is that we have 10 of our 13 girls coming back, but right now it’s hard to see anything good in losing.”

This was Decatur third trip to the playoffs in the last four years, and each time the Bulldogs lost in the first round.

Initially, things didn’t look so bleak. Decatur led 10-7 after one quarter and 22-18 at halftime.

But Heard County, using a full-court press – while having very little trouble with Decatur’s press – came storming back.

Taking its first lead at 30-28 with three minutes left in the third, the home team never looked back, eventually building that advantage to 10 in the fourth quarter.

An enormous disparity in free-throw shooting proved the difference in this one. Heard kept slashing to the basket and got fouled often.  

In the first half officials used their whistles sparingly, but in the second half, Roberts said, “they were making calls almost every time [the ball] was at their end. Yes, we had a lot of problems defensively. We weren’t moving our feet and we didn’t get [defensive] help from our post players – all the stuff we spent all week working on.

"I felt I pushed the officials as far as I could without getting a technical.”

Heard County wound up making 22 of 29 from the foul line for 76 percent, despite shooting only 30 percent from the floor. Decatur made 39 percent of its field goals but only 3 of 7 from the foul line.

Jordan Dillard, who finished with 10 Friday night, was the only other Decatur player in double figures. The Lady Bulldogs finished their season at 22-7 in losing their last three games.

Queen Alford closed her stellar high school career with 1,853 points. Alford, Ashleigh Rasheed and Summer Fowler are the team’s only departing seniors.

Heard County (23-3) advances to Tuesday’s second round, playing the winner of Friday’s night’s Rabun County-Calhoun game.

Bill Ainslie contributed to this report.