Top-seeded Chaffee girls basketball team tops No. 4 Oran, advances to conference title game

BENTON, Mo. -- Julia Sutterfield scored a bucket to spark a 10-0 run for Chaffee in the final three minutes of the first quarter.

The top-seeded Red Devils took a 17-8 advantage into the second quarter and never looked back, defeating the No. 4 Oran Eagles 51-31 in a girls basketball semifinal of the Scott-Mississippi Conference Tournament on Thursday at Kelly High School.

The Red Devils will take on No. 3 Charleston at 8:30 p.m. today in the championship game, while Chaffee will take on second-seeded Kelly in the third-place game. The Bluejays defeated the Hawks 68-64 in the second semifinal.

"It always helps when you can get out in front of teams at the beginning and kind of shut them down a little bit," Chaffee coach Darrin Pruitt said. "Our defense is working out for us. We've been working on it a lot. ... It takes five of them out there to do it, and we were able to accomplish something, especially the first few possessions we started playing defense out there. I thought, 'Man, they're finally getting it.' We kind of slacked up there a little bit and got tired, but we came back around to it."

Chaffee (11-2) opened the game with a 6-0 lead, but Ashlyn McIntosh knocked down a pair of free throws to cap an 8-1 run for Oran (8-3), giving the Eagles their only lead of the game at 8-7 with 2:55 remaining in the opening period.

That lead was quickly erased by the Red Devils, who held the Eagles scoreless for the remainder of the quarter. Freshman Kylie Wilhite knocked down one of her two 3-pointers during the Chaffee run and finished with a game-high 14 points.

"She made some freshman mistakes, but she's a great player," Pruitt said about Wilhite. "She made some shots out there, which helps us a lot. We depend on all our girls out there to step up when they're on the floor, and I think they did a great job."

Oran used a 6-2 run in the final four minutes of the second quarter to cut the Red Devils' lead to single digits. Chaffee led 27-19 at halftime.

Chaffee's Julia Sutterfield looks to pass with pressure from Oran's Hannah Scherer and Brianna Stause in the fourth quarter of a semifinal at the Scott-Mississippi Conference Tournament Thursday, Jan. 15, 2015 at Kelly High School. (Glenn Landberg)

The Eagles were limited to a six-player rotation and struggled shooting from the field, where they finished 12 of 56 (21 percent). McIntosh led Oran with 12 points.

"It had a lot to do with their defense. They kind of sunk in and made sure they guarded a couple of our shooters," Oran coach Ethan Evans said. "They kind of took away anything easy to get in the paint. ... We don't have a ton of shooters on our team this year, and they made sure they guarded those girls."

Chaffee's Jordan Pruitt scored five of her 11 points in the third period, during which the Red Devils outscored the Eagles 10-4 to take a 37-23 advantage into the final frame. Chaffee led by as many as 24 points in the fourth quarter.

"Their depth hurt us a little bit. ... We kind of got worn down there in that third quarter and didn't shoot the ball well at all," Evans said. "They're a tough team."

Pruitt said his team's top priority was limiting turnovers against an opportunistic Oran team.

"Their whole game is to feed off those live-ball turnovers and go up the floor, and we didn't want to give them those opportunities," Pruitt said. "We knew that going into it, and we kind of worked on it yesterday. I think the girls did a great job with that."

Oran 8 11 4 8 -- 31

Chaffee 17 10 10 14 -- 51

ORAN (31) -- Ashlyn McIntosh 12, Tatum May 7, Allison Cummins 6, Brianna Stause 6. FG 12, FT 3-14, F 14. (3-pointers: Cummins 2, Stause 2. Fouled out: none.)

CHAFFEE (51) -- Kylie Wilhite 14, Jordan Pruitt 11, Julia Sutterfield 9, Lindsey Harrell 9, Mary Beth Knutson 6, Lindsey Koch 2, Kaitlyn McFerron 2. FG 20, FT 8-11, F 14. (3-pointers: Wilhite 2, Pruitt 1. Fouled out: none.)