CENTRE – The Sand Rock Lady Wildcats had one goal in mind during their county basketball semifinal against Cherokee County: limit point guard Kaitlyn Griffith’s production.

Sand Rock has to feel it accomplished that mission.

The Lady Wildcats held Griffith to seven points and eight rebounds, but more importantly, they got her into foul trouble early. She picked up her fourth foul with 5:59 left in the third quarter, forcing Lady Warrior head coach Travis Barnes to take Griffith out of the game. That helped translate into Sand Rock’s 48-38 win Friday night at the Gadsden State-Cherokee arena.

The Lady Wildcats (11-10) advance to Saturday night’s county championship game, where they’ll face top-seeded Spring Garden (20-2) at 6 p.m. Cherokee County drops to 14-7 with the loss.

“We’ve had a week to prepare, so we knew what they were going to do,” Lady Wildcat head coach Lisa Bates said. “The girls stepped up on defense, and they did a good job rebounding. There were only a few times where we let them get second shots. Defensive rebounds won it.”

Barnes said his team got the shots they were looking for, but just couldn’t connect on them. Adding to the Lady Warriors’ troubles was their court leader not being on the floor.

“Everybody on our offense runs through Kaitlyn, and when she got in foul trouble, that seemed like it hurt us,” Barnes said. “In those situations, we’ve got to have people step up. Just because Kaitlyn’s not in there doesn’t mean we can’t run our offense. We played good defense, but we shot 18 percent tonight, and that’s the difference right there.”

Leading the Lady Wildcat charge was Lauren Bell and Tessa Pendergrass. Bell rang for 14 points, grabbed six boards and had four assists. Pendergrass pounded out 11 boards and scored 10 points.

However, it wasn’t an easy win by any means for the Lady Wildcats.

After building as much as an 11-point lead late in the third quarter and leading by a 37-28 margin heading into the fourth, the Lady Warriors made a run that trimmed Sand Rock’s lead to 37-36. Cherokee County got to within a point thanks to two made free throws by Deidra Davis with 3:45 left in the game.

Davis led the Lady Warriors with 19 points and nine rebounds.

“When Kaitlyn come out, Deidra stepped up,” Barnes said. “It seemed like every time we’d score, it would be her. She showed a lot of heart tonight.”

After Davis’ free throws, Bates called a time out to settle her team down. Although they didn’t hit a basket in the entire fourth quarter, they managed to do enough damage at the free-throw line.

For the night, the Lady Wildcats were 22 of 32 from the charity stripe.

“We didn’t fold tonight,” Bates said. “I think during that timeout, we got everyone focused. We were starting to panic a little bit when they came back. We started playing scared to lose instead of playing to win. I think we got everybody back mentally focused, and we hit some big free throws down the stretch.”

Lana Bell added six points, five rebounds and four steals for the Lady Wildcats. Gena Farmer finished with nine points.

Candace Blanchard also had nine rebounds for the Lady Warriors.

Sand Rock doesn’t have long to celebrate the win. Its attention quickly turns to top-seeded Spring Garden, which has won the last five Cherokee County girls tournament titles.

“We’re honored to be playing in the first (county) championship in this coliseum,” Bates said. “We’re excited about it. That’s been one of our goals, to be in the championship game and to try and win it. Spring Garden’s a great team. We’ll have to play well and play hard, and we’ll see what happens.”