Stayin’ alive

ALBANY — Like pressure?

Talk to the girls basketball team at Westover. The Lady Patriots have it coming at them from every angle.

“The boys basketball team wants us to win it. The principal wants us to win it. The school wants it. I think even Dougherty and Monroe want us to win it,” said Westover girls coach Lewis Smith, whose team — which toppled city rival Dougherty on Friday, 50-35 — can secure the home court in next month’s Region 1-AAA tournament for both the boys and girls teams.

All the Lady Patriots have to do is win the Region 1-AAA regular season race.

They took another step Friday by beating the Lady Trojans with a defense that was stingy enough to hold Dougherty to only three points in the second quarter.

That’s right, count ’em — 1-2-3 points.

The victory also keeps Westover (14-3, 8-2 in 1-AAA) tied with Peach County for first place in 1-AAA.

One problem: Peach County beat Westover earlier.

One solution: Westover hosts Peach County in the final game of the season.

If Smith’s girls can keep winning and knock off Peach, Westover wins the title and the region tournament home court.

“You know Monroe and Dougherty don’t want to drive 90 miles to Peach County,” Smith said. “Nobody wants that. So the pressure is on us to win it.”

The girls might get some help.

“If I have to, maybe I will dress out to help them. I might be in a girls uniform myself,” said Westover boys basketball coach Dallis Smith, whose team is in second in the region behind Monroe, the top-ranked AAA team in the state.

Westover’s boys, meanwhile, are ranked seventh. If they meet for the region title, just about everyone in Albany will want that game to be at Westover, not Peach County.

“That’s a lot of pressure, especially for a young team,” said Westover sophomore DyTiesha Dunson, who scored 16 of her game-high 21 points in the second half in the win. “I hear it all around school, from everyone — even teachers. The boys basketball team talks about it, teachers talk about it. Everyone says it.”

Westover has only two seniors and one of them — Danielle Glover — was out sick and didn’t play Friday.

Still, the Lady Patriots found a way to beat Dougherty (8-10 and 5-5 in Region 1-AAA) for the second time this year, holding the Lady Trojans to just 13 first-half points and 22 through three quarters. Dougherty made just eight baskets through three quarters, and would not have been in the game if not for Tiara Todd, who scored 18 of Dougherty’s 35 points.

“We did a good job on defense,” Lewis Smith said. “We have to work hard because we’re not that athletic. Dougherty is athletic, and it’s hard to beat them because they’re a good shooting team.”

Not on Friday.

“I don’t know what to say to them,” said Dougherty girls coach Charlene Jackson, whose team has now lost to all three city rivals –Albany, Monroe and Westover– in the past week. “They’re playing hard, but something is just missing. If I could tap on it, we could turn things around.”