Lauderdale County girls eye another Alabama basketball title
The Lauderdale County girls team huddle up during practice at Samford University Monday. (Solomon Crenshaw Jr./Alabama NewsCenter)
Like the sun rising in the eastern sky, Lauderdale County High School’s girls are again at Birmingham’s Legacy Arena with their sights on winning another state basketball championship.
The Tigers (29-7) are looking to extend their own state record for girls’ state championships which sits at 12, including the past four in a row. After beating Barbour County 83-38 Tuesday morning, they face the winner of Tuesday’s Brindlee Mountain-Montgomery Academy game for the Class 3A girls title.The championship game will be 12:30 p.m. on Friday.
For other scores from the Alabama High School Athletic Association Basketball Finals, visit the AHSAA site.
Emma Wallen and her three fellow seniors – including her triplet sisters Ella and Ivy – have only ended one of their high school basketball seasons without winning a championship. And that was when they were in the seventh grade.
Still, she says, the Tigers take nothing for granted.
“It can always be taken away,” said Emma Wallen, the leading scorer at 15.8 points per game. “Every year we work for it. Different things happen throughout the season that make it worthwhile coming back. It’s all different so, no, we don’t take anything for granted.”
Lauderdale County’s championship success is a tradition that began in the 1980s when coach (Larry) Sinyard guided the program. Coincidentally, Buffy Thompson Wallen, mother of the triplets, was a shooting guard and small forward on that first title team in 1987.
“Our kids, it’s important to them,” coach Brant Llewellyn said. “They’ve grown up watching other (Lauderdale County) teams be good and they want to do the same.”
The difference this year is in the loss column. Madison Academy knocked off Lauderdale County 58-54 in early December to end the Tigers’ 86-game winning streak. That string of victories is the Alabama High School Athletic Association record for consecutive victories by a girls or boys team.
The overall state record of 100 straight wins was set by the Tuscaloosa Academy boys in the Alabama Independent Schools Association in 1983.
With nearly everyone back from the 2015 title team, Llewellyn decided to toughen the 2015-16 schedule, including Class 3A No. 1 Madison Academy, Class 6A No. 1 Homewood, Class 4A No. 1 Deshler and a No. 1 team in Mississippi. That schedule became tougher still as the Tigers dealt with injuries to some key players.
Point guard Ivy Wallen tore the ACL in her right knee in July and missed the first eight to 10 games of the season. And when she returned to the lineup, forward Allie Craig Cruce – the leading scorer at the time – was out for a month and a half with a stress fracture in her hip.
“It created some tough times, especially when we were shorthanded against those good teams,” coach Llewellyn said. “We had to put some other players in those positions. With that playing time, it got them ready for some big games. In the long run, it was beneficial to us.”
Llewellyn stops short of saying his team is 100 percent, saying that Ivy Wallen is not the same player she was before her injury.
“But she’s getting there more and more every game,” the coach said. “And Allie Craig just came back so recently that she’s still playing her way back into shape. But we’re as close to 100 as we have been all year.”
So are the Tigers set to lift the championship trophy again?
“We’re gonna try,” Emma Wallen said. “It’s going to be a battle but we’re going to put everything out there.”
