The Lady Tigers basketball team split a couple of games last week. Coach Steve Sweat's team dropped a 60-43 decision to No. 10 ranked in AA, East Hall, but picked up a huge 62-30 win over visiting Fannin County.
The Lady Tigers had a tough task against East Hall. The Lady Vikings have two players that have already signed to play college basketball next season.
Guard Jazmine Jenkins will play at Vanderbilt and Morgan Jackson will extend her basketball career at Georgia College.
East Hall got off to a fast start and took a 15-1 lead after one quarter of play.
Dawson County fought back and outscored East Hall in the second quarter, 18-10, to trail 25-19 at halftime.
The Lady Vikings came out of the locker room on fire and extended the team's lead to 40-27 after the third quarter. The Lady Tigers did not give up. The team cut East Hall's lead to 42-39 with just 3:12 remaining in the game.
Jackson connected on a shot to make the score 44-39 and the Lady Tigers couldn't recover. Jackson led the Lady Vikings in scoring with 23 points, followed by Jenkins, who tallied 16 points.
Dawson County was led in scoring by senior Morgan Huber with 12 points.
East Hall moved to 12-1 overall and 2-0 in sub-region play.
Lady Tigers scorers: Huber - 12 points; Kacie Bearden - 9 points; Sheyenne Seabolt - 8 points; Ashley Parker - 6 points; Carly Gilreath - 5 points and Allie Costley - 3 points.
Playing at home in front of a boisterous crowd, the Lady Tigers picked up a Region 8A-AA victory over rival Fannin County. It was the first win over the Lady Rebels in almost nine years.
"This was a much needed region win for us tonight," Sweat said. "This was our first win in the sub-region and it felt good."
After a close first quarter, in which Dawson held a slim 18-11 lead, the Lady Tigers defense stepped up in the second quarter and limited Fannin to only 2 points. Dawson took a commanding 28-13 advantage into the locker room at halftime.
Dawson's defense didn't miss a beat after intermission.
The Lady Tigers continued to shutdown Fannin's offense and allowed them only 6 points in the third quarter to put the game out of reach by a 44-19 score.
Junior point guard Carly Gilreath had a game-high 16 points to pace Dawson County.
Freshman post player Ashley Parker had double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds. Parker was a perfect 6-for-6 from the free throw line.
As a team, the Lady Tigers shot 23-for-29 from the charity stripe for 79 percent.
Lady Tigers scorers: Gilreath - 16 points; Parker - 10 points; Huber - 9 points; Seabolt - 9 points; Kim Wallace - 8 points; Costley - 3 points; Hannah Porter - 2 points; Kenna Seitz - 2 points; Alison Honea - 2 points and Whitney Glover - 1 point.
Dawson County is currently 10-8 overall and 1-2 in Region 8A-AA play.
In the upcoming week the Lady Tigers will play on the road twice.
On Friday, the team will visit Blairsville for a game against Union County. Then Jan. 24, Sweat's team will make the long trip to Banks County against a much-improved Lady Leopards team.