Fayetteville girls rally past Van Buren in second half

PREP GIRLS

FAYETTEVILLE 51, VAN BUREN 49

FAYETTEVILLE — Van Buren nearly got out of Bulldog Arena with a win Friday.

But despite leading Fayetteville for most of the way, the Lady Pointers came up just short of pulling the upset against the defending Class 7A champions.

Fayet teville trailed through the entire second and third quarters and found itself behind by as much as eight points late in the first half against the hot-shooting Lady Pointers. But a couple of quick scoring spurts in the second half, and stingy defense in the closing minutes was just enough for the Lady Purple’Dogs in a 51-49 nonconference win.

“It got to a possession-by- possession game because their defense was so good,” Fayetteville coach Vic Rimmer said. “We got down six or so twice and we’d make a run.

“But we did enough things on defense to make them take some tough shots. And I don’t know how many points we got off turnovers, but we points we got were huge.”

Fayetteville (7-2) trailed 40- 34 early in the fourth quarter before a quick 6-0 run tied the game. From there on, it was back and forth between the two teams as the Lady’Dogs and Lady Pointers swapped the lead the rest of the way.

A Grayce Spangler 3- pointer put Fayetteville ahead 50-49 with 1 minute, 22 seconds left. Van Buren committed a five- second turnover on its next possession but would have another chance to re-take the lead following a Lady’Dogs missed free throw.

With 9.1 seconds left, the Lady Pointers ( 7-3) dialed up a play for Lani Snowden on the inbounds. Snowden’s 3-point attempt from around 24 feet was well short and went out of bounds.

“That’s the play (we wanted),” Van Buren coach Chris Bryant said. “We would have wanted (leading scorer) Jamilyn (Kinney) to have the opportunity but the last quarter and a half they weren’t allowing her to have any good looks.

“We executed it the way we wanted. Would have like to caught it a step or two closer, but Fayetteville can make you catch it a step or two out farther than you want.”

Kinney, Van Buren’s sophomore point guard, had 16 points and was responsible for finding open shooters as the Lady Pointers hit 6 of 8 from 3-point range in the first half. But after intermission, Fayetteville locked down and did not allow Kinney to convert a field goal, holding her to six free throws in the final two quarters.

“You tried to jump them in the press and ( Kinney) would make plays and find the open player,” Rimmer said. “So you can’t press them and she took us out of what we wanted to do.”

Pink Jones led Fayetteville with 12 points and Kylee Coulter and Spangler added 11 and 10 respectively. Snowden also finished with 11 for Van Buren.

Fayetteville plays Valley Springs at 2:30 p.m. today in the Billy Ply Classic at Flippin.