Rock Hill girls deflect size issues ahead of Upper State championship

Rock Hill High’s girls’ basketball team keeps all the normal statistics - points per game, rebounds, assists and so on - but there is one interesting category appended at the end of each player’s individual stat line: deflections.

Keeping track of that stat - the amount of times a Rock Hill player touches the ball on defense during a game - is indicative of the team’s commitment to active hands on defense. The barrage of turnovers Kenny Orr’s Bearcats (25-2) force has enabled them to offset their one big disadvantage, a lack of size up front.

“We’re one of the shortest teams,” said junior guard Whitney Malone, whose two tallest teammates are 5-foot-10. “In order for us to keep up and take leads we have to be aggressive on defense, mostly on the perimeter.”

After a 10:30 a.m. send-off from the Rock Hill YMCA Saturday morning, the Bearcats travel to Greenville to face Spring Valley in a 5 p.m. 4A Upper State championship game at Bon Secours Arena.

Anne Long’s Spring Valley team has won its last 12 games in a row by an average of nearly 31 points. The Vikings (25-2) will directly challenge Rock Hill’s lack of height through 6-foot-3 senior center Shantay Taylor, a University of Central Florida recruit that averages a double-double of 14.5 points and 11 rebounds per outing. Senior guard Christian Hithe, the team’s leading scorer at 17 points per game, will also play Division I basketball next season at Temple.

“She’s an anchor,” Orr said about Taylor. “We’ve seen some similar opposing players height-wise, but nothing like what she does. She can hit the mid-range, she can post-up and she’s very dominating on the boards, offensively and defensively. She just creates a problem we haven’t seen.”

Spring Valley only has one other 6-footer besides Taylor, freshman Taylor Lewis, but that’s two more than Rock Hill has. Still, Orr’s team has been able to counteract that shortcoming by preventing the ball from getting inside in the first place. Steals out front also foster one of Rock Hill’s best sources of easy offense, run-out layups. Hence the emphasis on deflections.

”Since we’re not tall we’ve got to get our hands on everything,” said sophomore guard Brooklyn Bailey.

Rock Hill had nine steals and 18 points off turnovers against Ridge View, a trend that swung the game in the Bearcats’ favor in the second half. The disparity was even greater in the 20-point first round win over Greenwood, which had a considerable size advantage over Rock Hill. The Bearcats got 38 of their 66 points off turnovers in that win.

Friday afternoon, Orr’s team was divided into groups of four and five playing keep-away from a player in the middle. Still, it’ll take a little more than deflections and turnovers to beat Spring Valley, the defending state champs. This isn’t Long’s first time in Greenville; she’s the winningest coach in South Carolina high school girls’ basketball history, her resume sporting well over 800 career wins in 40-plus seasons.

“They’ve done this year in and year out,” said Orr. “So hopefully we can just get the nerves out of us and give them a competitive brand of basketball.”

Spring Valley has won four state titles, with three of those coming in the last six years under Long. Rock Hill experienced the Vikings’ gold standard last season when Spring Valley ended the Bearcats’ season in the second round with a 62-49 loss.

“We know what to expect, how they play,” said Bailey. “So that’s what we’re working on.”

This story was originally published February 26, 2016 at 6:25 PM with the headline "Rock Hill girls deflect size issues ahead of Upper State championship."