WINNSBOR0 – The Fairfield Central Lady Griffins continued their strong early season push at home last week against the Great Falls Red Devils. Great Falls kept it close in the opening, but things quickly got out of hand and the Griffins breezed through the remainder of the game for a 51-11 win.
Zariah Rice (12) escapes the defender for the easy layup. | Ross Burton
An early Great Falls bucket tied the game at 2-2, but then the Griffins proceeded to go 33-0 run that stretched until midway point of the third quarter. Madisen Belton had the hot hand early, and she scored seven of the Griffins 11 first quarter points.
“They saw that Great Falls wasn’t just going to lay down and let us win,” Griffins’ head coach Amelia Miller said. “So when they saw that they turned the light switch on and said ‘ok let’s go in and beat them.’”
Senior Lakeyn Boyd turned it on for the Griffins in the second quarter. She scored the first eight points in the second quarter and by halftime the Griffins held a commanding 32-2 lead. Boyd ended with a game-high 22 points and 17 of those came in the second.
“When she gets in that zone, you can cancel Christmas on it,” Miller said. “She works extremely hard and we depend on her on both sides of the floor, which is really hard but she does a great job leading this team.”
The Red Devils mustered up four points in the third quarter after they broke the Griffins’ long scoring streak with four minutes left in the quarter. Fairfield still outscored Great Falls 12-4 in the quarter and led 46-6 going into the fourth.
Great Falls had their most productive offensive quarter in the fourth but could not put an effective dent in the Griffins’ iron-clad lead.
“I was definitely happy with our hustle and effort,” Miller said. “I told them you just had to go in and beat them and they did just that. Defense won this game tonight and nothing else. I’m definitely proud of my Lakeyn. You had Cristin Gray and Zariah Rice and we really depend on them to carry the team and they do that.”
The Griffins followed up the statement win the next night with a 58-41 win against Newberry.
The Lady Griffins kick off the 2019 portion of their season with home games. They host Camden on Jan. 8 and Columbia on Jan. 9.
FCHS: 11-21-14-5-51
GFHS: 2-0-4-5-11
FCHS: Lakeyn Boyd – 22, Madisen Belton – 11, Zariah Rice – 7, Tavionna Kincaid – 7, Mikaela Gaines – Cristin Gray – 2.
GFHS: #14 – 3, #32 – 2, #10 – 2, #12 – 2, #52 – 2.