Lady Devils top Lady Pats in OT

Lady Devils top Lady Pats in OT

West Memphis ’ Hazley hits 34 in big win

By Billy Woods

WM School District Aryah Hazley was a one-person wrecking ball on Friday night.

The junior point guard accounted for 64 percent of her team’s offense in the Lady Devils’ 53-49 overtime victory at Marion.

Hazley poured through a game-high 34 points and assisted on a few other West Memphis baskets to single-handedly beat Marion by herself.

“Aryah did a really good job of being under control,” said Lady Devils head coach Sonja Tate.

“She’s put in a lot of work on her shot and mixing things up.”

Hazley scored five of her points in overtime, including a three-point play that gave the Lady Devils (11-7 overall, 4-4 in the 5A-East Conference) the lead for good with 1:47 to play with the score 48-47.

She then clinched the game by sinking 3 of 4 free throws in the final 48 seconds of overtime.

“(Hazley) was also very clutch tonight,” Tate added. The trend in West Memphis’ last three losses to Marion has been for the Lady Devils to break out on top early, but eventually fade in the end.

The trend reversed a bit on Friday night.

Marion darted out to a 10-1 lead before Hazley got it going from the floor.

Hazley hit 15 of her points in the first half as the Lady Devils built a 28-19 advantage at intermission.

But the Lady Patriots (12-10, 4-4) hit the visitors hard at the beginning of the second half by scoring the first 10 points of the third quarter and outscoring West Memphis 18-4 in the stanza to take a 37-32 lead heading into the fourth quarter.

West Memphis sophomore Ta’Nya Burnett, who although only scored 6 points, made one of the biggest defensive plays of the night for her team. She stole the ball near midcourt and then converted a layup on the other end which preceded a rebound basket by junior center Tierra Bradley to give the Lady Devils a 37-36 lead.

Turnovers nearly cost the Lady Devils the game. The visitors turned it over 22 times to just 9 for Marion.

Down 44-43 and approaching one minute left in the game, the Lady Devils turned it over and allowed Tashlee Milow to tie the game by splitting a pair of free throws. It eventually allowed the game to be sent into overtime.

“It looked like Deja Vu from our last game,” said Tate. “We’d get a rebound and just throw it without looking where we were throwing it. We called timeout and I said, ‘listen, we have a point guard and we need to get it into our playmaker’s hands.”

In the extra stanza, Hazley hit two free throws with 1.5 seconds to play to make it a two-possession game (53-49) and it clinched the game for the Lady Devils.

Senior Kenya Freeman added 7 points for West Memphis while Bradley added 4.

Marion was paced by Joi Montgomery and Keiana Delaney, each of whom had 14 points.

The Lady Devils return home Tuesday night to face Searcy.

Tierra Bradley (50) came off the bench and produced for the Lady Devils again.

Photos by Billy Woods

West Memphis’ Terrica Inmon (right) battles for possession with Marion’s Mikiya McAdory.