Story and Photo by Rusty Ellis
The Clay County Lady Bulldogs made a deep postseason run in 2020-21, as they saw their season come to an end in the Class A Final Four against eventual champion Loretto.
After going 20-4 in the regular season, winning the district title and claiming a road victory over Whitwell in the sectional round, the Lady Bulldogs are headed back to the Murphy Center.
While many teams might have been motivated to get back to that point, head coach Matthew Walker says it wasn’t really the first thing on his team’s mind; they wanted to focus on constant improvement.
“We minded wanted to play our best night in and night out,” Walker said. “We had a great year last year, and we hadn’t really talked a lot about winning it all per se…I think we’re playing some of our best ball right now.”
While it was never openly discussed amongst the team, Walker says that making the return to the Glass House definitely served as a motivating factor.
“The girls all knew what we had coming back,” Walker said. “We had a good bunch of returning players, and some players from last year have really improved a lot…I hope the experience from playing there last year carries over to this year.”
The district season did a lot to prepare the Lady Bulldogs for this part of the season, as they battled in a league featuring Pickett County, Red Boiling Springs and Clarkrange. Clay County went 7-1 in district play with their lone loss coming early in the season at Clarkrange.
Clay took down Gordonsville in the district semifinals before defeating Red Boiling Springs in the district championship 47-39. Walker says he believes that playing in one of the state’s toughest Class A league is something that will pay dividends against the best the class has to offer this year.
“We’ve been battling several teams that have really great programs,” Walker said. “Just the schedule we play and the district we’re in, as well as the Upper Cumberland as a whole, I feel like it really prepared us for the state tournament.”
It wasn’t without road bumps however, as Clay fell in the region title game to Red Boiling Springs 54-40. This meant that in order to make it to Murfreesboro, the Lady Bulldogs had to go on the road to Whitwell and win in a tough environment.
It ended up taking a gritty, defensive effort, led by seniors Zoe Hayes and Eliza Jenkins, to give the Lady Bulldogs a 41-39 win over the Lady Tigers.
“We really just focused on our defense, that was the game plan going in,” Walker said. “Our shots didn’t go early…at halftime, I told my girls that we were too talented a team to miss these shots. Defense has been the focus of my program for the last six years. It takes a team effort, locking into the scouting report and paying attention to the game plan.”
Clay County will now turn their focus to Gleason, a team they’re actually familiar with as they played them on Dec. 29 in the Richland Christmas Tournament. Those Lady Bulldogs took home a 57-41 win over Clay County, though Walker says he’s expecting a different showing this time around.
“They obviously did not get our best shot,” Walker said. “We’ve definitely improved since then, and I’m sure they have too, but I think that little bit of familiarity has kind of inspired our girls and made they want a rematch with them.”
The battle of the Bulldogs will take place on Thursday at 1:15 P.M. at the Murphy Center in Murfreesboro.