‘Why you play’: After season that defied expectations, Clover falls in 5A state final
The Clover girls’ basketball team stood in a line at the free-throw line facing center court — its players teary-eyed, its coach with a despondent stare.
After the game’s first three quarters and some change, this isn’t where they thought they’d be. Despite the game unfolding the way their opponent wanted it to — a slow pace, a turnover-riddled statline — and despite being down two possessions for most of the last minute of the game, the final result didn’t seem to sink in for Clover until the final buzzer.
Goose Creek beat Clover, 42-38, and the Gators were 5A state champions — a familiar moniker in a familiar venue of Colonial Life Arena in Columbia.
“Disappointment, certainly,” Clover coach Sherer Hopkins said postgame. “That’s kind of why you play the games. You know that’s a possibility, but we got to this point, and I’m not sure a lot of people believed we could. But I’m very proud of them and what they accomplished.”
The Blue Eagles didn’t hit a 3-pointer in the game, and they shot 11 more shots and notched 14 more rebounds than the Gators. But they couldn’t conquer Goose Creek coach Tim Baldwin’s well-executed game plan. With the win, Baldwin led his program to its third state championship in four years and its fourth in its past 10.
“They’re averaging just over 60 points a game,” Baldwin said. “We figured it would have to be a grind on defense. We had to put the pressure on them and control the score.”
And they did.
The championship game’s first half wasn’t pretty: Clover junior guard Aylesha Wade scored her team’s first four points and kept pace with a Gator team that endured its own share of shooting struggles.
Outside of a collision near Clover’s 3-point line — where Wade crashed into a Goose Creek defender and hobbled off the court under her own power — the first half didn’t have any surprises. Wade re-entered the game with 6:50 left in the second quarter.
Clover went into the break up, 14-11.
The second half began even slower — for both teams. The Blue Eagles didn’t hit a field goal until nearly seven minutes past halftime. Each team only scored nine points in the quarter, the Blue Eagles still clinging to a three-point lead.
If there was one play that defined the game, it occurred in the fourth quarter. Clover senior Mariana Ballard drove to the basket, drew contact and flicked up a shot that spun on the backboard and somehow found its way in.
A charge was called — which effectively fouled out Ballard — but the Clover players set up on the free-throw line, thinking it was an and-one. Ballard was on the court.
With the players not set, Goose Creek inbounded the ball and ran to an open layup, extending its lead to three.
“It was a difficult call, for sure,” Hopkins said. “It did change the momentum, I thought a little bit. But it didn’t change what we should’ve done.”
The Blue Eagles played from behind the rest of the game, fouling early but not gaining any ground because of the Gators making free throws.
Goose Creek was led by Janise Shaw, who ended the game with 16 points and eight rebounds, and Aniyah Oliver, who finished with 13 points and eight assists. Clover was led by Wade, who scored 12 points and notched seven rebounds; Taylor Thomas, who scored five points and nine rebounds; and La Destiny Worthy, who finished with nine points and seven rebounds.
Once the buzzer sounded, Wade crouched, her head low, tears filling her eyes. After a few moments, she fell in line with the rest of her team, waiting to receive their second-place trophy.
Behind the Blue Eagles — metaphorically and physically — was Clover’s crowd. It took up a third of the arena’s lower bowl.
Leading up to Friday, this community embraced its team from the beginning of the season, supporting it through its 28 wins and two losses. It cheered when Clover clinched a region championship in early February. It didn’t flinch when the team lost to Rock Hill in the last week of the regular season, which elevated outside opinions that questioned if this Blue Eagle team was truly the best team in the state, like the SCBCA rankings had declared for most of the season.
And, on Friday, this community cleared its calendar — the school moved all sporting events so it could travel to Columbia on Friday — so it could see something it had never seen before: a Clover girls’ basketball state championship.
It didn’t, but it still showed up for a team that wasn’t expected to be here in the first place. And after the final, it chanted in unison: “We love Clover! We love Clover!”
“Just like anytime you end a season like this, you want to talk about the positives,” Hopkins said of what her team said in the locker room. “Of course, everybody is sad and disappointed in the outcome, but, you know, we got to keep moving forward. We talked about all the good things that we’ve done this season.
“And I’m just really proud of them.”
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 8:52 PM.
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