Donettes still dancing, knocking off MICDS to reach MSHSAA Class 4 championship match

A showdown between the two most talented young squads in Class 4 took place Friday night at Mizzou Arena, and after making an abused third-quarter push to eventually go up double digits, Doniphan girls basketball got the best of MICDS, 55-47, in an MSHSAA Show-Me Showdown semifinal clash.

Going into the half down 2, the Donettes had the feeling that they just weren’t playing their brand of basketball, and it showed.

“We really focused on as being us,” Doniphan coach Adam Epps said. “I don't think we were us in the first half.”

They needed a spark, and they found it right away. Rolling off a 9-0 run to start the third quarter, building up a lead of 7, Doniphan rode that wave all the way to an 8-point win and its first championship appearance since 2001, second overall in four final four appearances.

“We kind of got into our little mojo,” Epps said. “We got some pressure on the basketball and were able to get some points in transition because of our defense.”

There are a handful of heroes on Doniphan’s roster, but the regular star shined brightest Friday night: Carsyn Hagood, the spectacular sophomore who can seemingly do it all, dropped an unbelievable 27-point performance to lead the way for the Donettes.

Joining her in double digits, Ellie White’s 12 points and another 10 from Madilyn Redus paved the way for a multi-faceted Doniphan offense to rack up points in the second half, breaking out of an early spell.

Redus’ 4 steals and White’s 3 were far more important than their scoring, however, taking an MICDS offense that had its way in a fast-paced first half down a notch by forcing 7 turnovers in the second half alone.

That defense was the edge they needed, and the Donettes took that break and ran away with it.

“How do you not start a little star-struck in this environment?” Epps began. “Underneath the bright lights, we just kind of a little tense on defense in the first half.”

Beginning the game in a scoring drought, it wasn’t until early into the second quarter that the Donettes found their scoring stride, hitting three 3-pointers in as many possessions to take a 2-point lead.

It didn’t take long for the Rams to match that effort, however, regaining the lead on a triple from CeCe Harris who doubled up with a buzzer-beating bank shot to give MICDS a 2-point lead at the half, 23-21.

“We knew we were going to give up some stuff and just live with it,” Epps said. “made the shot at half court. I said that's all right,

The defensive effort hinged almost entirely on the prevention of one player from getting hot: No. 30, Jordyn Haywood, the 6-foot freshman who has more Big 10 offers than a 7-foot-4 international post and a frame that’d make any player think twice about driving the paint.

Doniphan isn’t the tallest team under the sun, and the size advantage created by Haywood was certainly noticeable at times. That being said, holding the phenom to 13 points was a win so decisive that it almost single-handedly created the edge the Donettes needed to claim victory.

“(Haywood) made a couple of really nice jump shots. They’re like, ‘Hey, what do I do?’ 
I said, ‘It's just of it. Good shot,’ and they just get back down there and play the next play. It was nice for us to be us in the second half, to not get rattled.”

Haywood finished with 13 points in the loss, followed by CeCe Harris’s 10 and 7 from Lily Harris as a deep-scoring Rams squad just couldn’t find the basket in a hard-fought loss in the semifinals.

Doniphan advances to the 8 p.m. Saturday night state championship game, facing off with the winner of Friday night’s Logan-Rogersville versus Benton nightcap while MICDS drops to the third-place game at 2 p.m. against the loser.

It’s a unique opportunity for the Donettes to claim their first state championship in program history, which would coincide as the first state championship in school history.

Asked about the significance of his time with the program, Epps, a graduate of the now-defunct Southern Missouri Christian High School, seemed over the moon about the opportunity to take this program to the next level.

“I said it pretty quickly after I got here, there's not a better place to coach in all of Missouri girls basketball than Doniphan,” Epps said. “These girls right here, they'll testify there's not a better place to be a girls basketball player than Doniphan, Missouri.

“We call them Donette Nation – they absolutely adore them. They come out, they support them. We raised a lot of money to get here and to not have to worry about meals and stuff like this. The outpouring of love, you can't really express it unless you've been there.”