The first six minutes of Tuesday night’s game were perhaps the roughest stretch that the Franklin girls basketball team has been through so far this season. The Grizzly Cubs nearly overcame it.
After spotting Martinsville a 14-0 lead, Class 4A No. 5 Franklin stormed back and twice got to within a point — but the early struggles proved just too much to overcome in a 74-71 loss that gave the 12th-ranked Artesians the outright Mid-State Conference championship.
"We just were not ready to play, and it showed," Franklin coach Josh Sabol said. "I give them a lot of credit — they’re a very good basketball team. But we can’t start out (down 14-0) against good teams."
The Artesians (16-4, 7-0) punched Franklin in the face right from the opening tip, with senior Pa’Shence Walker going straight to the rim for three layups in a row to start the game. Ashlyn Traylor followed with a three-point play to stretch the lead to nine, and she hit from outside the arc less than a minute later, forcing the Grizzly Cubs to take their second timeout of the game just 4:09 into the action.
Slowly, the host squad settled into the game and at least prevented Martinsville from completely running away. The duo of Erica Buening and Megan Thompson provided a spark off the bench, combining for 10 first-half points to help get the Franklin offense going, but it wasn’t until after the Artesians’ Kearsten Willen hit a pair of 3s early in the second quarter to widen the gap to 25-9 that the Grizzly Cubs fully kicked it into gear.
Consecutive treys by Kyra Baker and Lauren Klem started what turned into a 21-9 surge over the final six and a half minutes of the second quarter. The Franklin defense, which forced 10 first-half turnovers, fueled that run, which ended with another Baker 3 and a Kuryn Brunson bucket in the final minute and got the Grizzly Cubs to within 34-30 at the break.
Klem opened the third period with a 3 to make it a one-point game, but the Artesians were able to stay out front thanks largely to their punishing transition game. Walker and Ashlyn Traylor, who led all scorers with 27 and 23 points, respectively, beat everyone down the court for layups on multiple occasions whether the Grizzly Cubs had made or missed at the other end.
"Our transition defense really, really hurt us," Sabol said. "Whenever we would get a big basket — we just needed maybe one stop to get over the hump a little bit, but they would answer every time we would score."
Still down eight with under six minutes to go in the game, Franklin made a late charge. A pair of Thompson 3s helped cut the Martinsville lead to 64-60 by the 4:12 mark, and then freshman Scarlett Kimbrell — held scoreless over the first 30-plus minutes — knocked down two deep balls of her own, the second with 28.4 seconds left to cut it to 70-68.
Adelyn Walker scored at the other end before Thompson hit her fifth 3-pointer of the night to get the score to 72-71 with 12 seconds on the clock, but Pa’Shence Walker made two free throws with 5.4 seconds to go, and Martinsville prevented Franklin from getting a game-tying look before the horn.
Thompson had 17 points to lead the Grizzly Cubs (17-2, 6-1), while Brunson finished with 15 points, six rebounds and seven assists. Klem and Baker each scored 12, with Baker adding four steals, and Buening finished with nine points and four assists.
Though his team showed plenty of grit in coming back from a devastating start, Sabol hopes that the setback will serve as a wake-up call for his team heading into postseason play next week.
"We’ve definitely got to be a lot tougher and we have to play a lot harder if we expect to do well in the tournament," he said.
