HANCEVILLE - If you take Craig Thomas at his word [and you should, seeing as how Phil Campbell’s fourth-year head coach is every bit the straight shooter now that he was during his playing days as a high-scoring point guard at PCHS in the late 1980s], the Lady Bobcats have had their sights set on Birmingham for quite a while.
“All summer long,” Thomas says, “we preached on going to the Final Four, Final Four, Final Four, not getting beat.”
Birmingham—not Hanceville, mind you, but Birmingham—was a lofty goal, to say the least, for a team coming off a season in which it lost more games than it won. But if you’re doubting Thomas, listen to Abby Davis.
“That was our goal all year,” the junior post player says. “Make it to Birmingham.”
Again, it’s worth pointing out that the opening round of the area tournament [which is where a frustrating season for Phil Campbell ended a year ago] is a long, long way from the Magic City. Upon further review, however, perhaps all that Final Four talk by Thomas and his team this summer wasn’t as far-fetched as it seemed. Clearly, he knew some things.
For starters, Thomas knew that things were changing at area rival Red Bay, where Hall of Fame coach Donnie Roberts was retiring and perennial All-State players Allie Kennedy and Darby Madden were moving on to the college ranks. The Class 2A, Area 14 title was essentially there for the taking.
Secondly, Thomas knew that his team was better than its 14-15 record last season.
“We were pretty good last year,” he said. “We played a very tough schedule.”
Finally, Thomas knew better than anyone how determined his team was to improve and put that disappointing season behind them. He saw it every day.
“The girls worked hard this summer,” he said. “We absolutely worked. Everybody showed up every day. Their work ethic…this senior class has the best work ethic of any class I’ve had since I’ve been at Phil Campbell.”
With a talented group of veterans led by Davis, fellow junior Dakota Elliott and seniors Darby Elliott and Chloe Roberson coming back, not to mention another impact player joining the fold in freshman guard Caitlynn Mills, Phil Campbell was undoubtedly going to be better this season. Maybe even a lot better.
But Birmingham better? With perennial powers Mars Hill, Tanner and Cold Springs all lurking as potential roadblocks? Surely the Lady Bobcats were over-reaching.
Enter Kallie Allen.
Allen, a long and athletic 5’9 guard with a diverse skill set on both ends of the floor, transferred from Russellville to Phil Campbell prior to this, her sophomore season. The moment she walked through the gym door, Birmingham suddenly seemed a whole lot closer.
“Kallie transferred in and let us put a few people in the right spots to make us a little bit better,” Thomas said in what has to qualify as the early front-runner for Understatement of the Year.
Allen instantly became Phil Campbell’s most dangerous perimeter shooter, but her greatest value lies in her versatility. Need a big-time rebounder? An on-ball defender? Someone to handle the ball and initiate the offense? Another quick-twitch athlete to create havoc on the press?
Allen is all those things wrapped up in the same player—the very definition of a difference-maker.
“Kallie hustles when someone can’t score,” Darby Elliott says. “She’s there to pick up the other person and make some shots.”
Monday afternoon’s Class 2A Northwest Regional final at Tom Drake Coliseum on the campus of Wallace-Hanceville offered a prime example of Allen’s importance. She scored six first-quarter points to get the Lady Bobcats out to an early lead, but Cold Springs rallied to go in front 11-10 on a three-point play by sophomore star Elizabeth Hill with 6:01 remaining in the first half.
Davis, coming off a 22-point effort in the regional semifinal win over third-ranked Mars Hill, had been whistled for her second foul just moments earlier and was fastened to the Phil Campbell bench. The Lady Bobcats typically run their offense through Davis—the team’s leading scorer coming in at 14.4 points per game—in the high post, but Thomas didn’t panic. He simply moved Allen to Davis’s customary spot just above the foul line and let her go to work.
After assisting on a jumper by Mills that put Phil Campbell back on top, Allen reeled off the Lady Bobcats’ final eight points of the half in impressive fashion: First, a right-hand drive around Hill from the high post for a layup to make it 14-11; then, a lefty finish off another drive at the 3:50 mark to push the lead to 16-12; on the next possession, a running bank shot from the right side of the lane; and finally, an 18-footer from the top of the key that sent Phil Campbell into the locker room up five at 20-15.
It was a stretch so pivotal as to challenge Thomas’s vocabulary.
“Kallie was…what would be a good word? She played big,” Thomas said. “They went to a box-and-one on Abby, which we sort of felt like they would do early in the week. We started practicing for it. We put Kallie in there and worked her in the middle a little bit, and she stepped up when she had to.”
Rest assured, she had to. While the rest of the team endured a 3-for-21 performance from the floor in Monday’s first half, Allen shot 6-for-8 and scored 14 points. She would finish with a game-high 20, earning tournament MVP honors as the Lady Bobcats wrapped up their first regional championship and punched their ticket to you-know-where with a 46-29 win.
“It was really fun,” said the soft-spoken Allen, who finished 9-for-13 from the field and also pulled down eight rebounds while upping her season average to 12.5 points per game. “I did it for my team. It took all of us, not just me.”
It was—as all championships are—a team effort. Darby Elliott harassed Cold Springs sharpshooter Camryn Crider all over the floor and also scored nine huge points in the third quarter, helping Phil Campbell (26-5) put its 16th straight win on ice. Dakota Elliott was primarily responsible for holding the 5’11 Hill—coming off a 30-point outing in the regional semifinals against Lamar County—to just nine points on 4-for-10 shooting. [A second-quarter injury to her left arm that caused Hill to miss the start of the second half and ultimately ended her night prematurely also played a role.]
Mills played major minutes on the big stage for the second straight game and finished with five points, and Roberson chipped in with four points and five rebounds. Davis battled through foul trouble and a tough shooting night to finish with 10 rebounds, two assists, one steal and one block. But it was Allen who cut Cold Springs’ heart out.
“We hadn’t seen her play like that,” said Lady Eagles’ coach Tammy West, whose team lost to Phil Campbell 67-59 in a Thanksgiving tournament at West Point way back on November 20. “She had a great game. They’re absolutely much better than the last time we played them. They played with a lot of confidence today.”
Asked if her team guarded Allen in the high post the same way they guarded Davis in the high post, West couldn’t suppress a smirk.
“Obviously, we didn’t,” she said, resisting the urge to glance down at the stat sheet in front of her. “We were supposed to. But we didn’t.”
After Allen carried the Lady Bobcats to a halftime lead, Darby Elliott took over offensively in the third quarter. The senior guard buried a three—just her third of the season—off a nice kickout from Davis, then pulled up on the fast break to drop in a floater and make it 25-15. Crider got loose for a three-pointer to cut the lead back to seven, but Elliott rebounded a miss a few moments later and raced coast-to-coast for a layup to make it 27-18.
Allen tacked on a driving basket at the 3:00 mark, and then Elliott assisted on a layup by Mills. A couple of trips later, Elliott picked Crider’s pocket for the second time on the day and went the other way for an easy layup to cap off an 8-0 run and push the lead to 33-18.
After Allen drove the lane for a lefty layup to close out the third quarter and make it 35-20, eight minutes and a handful of free throws were all that separated the Lady Bobcats from the destination they’d been dreaming of since last summer. Birmingham was so close that Davis—a four-year varsity veteran with 1,328 career points—could practically reach out and touch it.
“I guess it was toward the fourth quarter when I realized how much we were up by,” she said, “and I got so excited. And you’re just, like, amazed. I’ve been playing since my eighth-grade year, and that’s what I thought back to. I’ve never got to have that feeling of ‘Hey, we’re going to Birmingham. We just won the championship game.’ It was an awesome feeling to have.”
It must be an incredible feeling, too, for Thomas, who was a ninth-grader at PCHS in 1987 when his father Jerry “CT” Thomas led Phil Campbell’s girls to their most recent Final Four berth. [The Lady Bobcats lost in the Class 3A state championship game in both 1986 and ’87, to Tanner and Lauderdale County, respectively.] Now, 31 years later, the younger Thomas will take Phil Campbell back to the Final Four in search of the program’s first-ever state title.
“Wow. Back in ’87, when my dad was coaching, I was there for the whole ride,” said Thomas, whose team will take on top-ranked Samson (29-3) in the state semifinals next Monday at 3 p.m. at the BJCC. “I didn’t get to see him much, I’ll tell you that. He stayed busy. He has mentored me over the past four years on how to prepare these girls. He’s got 35 years in coaching, so he’s been here and done it. There’s a lot of difference in someone who can just tell you something and somebody who’s actually been there and done it.
“He keeps me in line,” Thomas added with a smile, “thus I keep the girls in line.”
True to form, Thomas was still coaching his rear end off in the final two minutes of Monday’s win, well after most of the starters had headed to the bench and the outcome had been decided. Cold Springs reserve Prisca McAnnally got loose for a transition basket, and Thomas—literally moments away from a landmark victory, a trophy presentation and a berth in the Final Four—couldn’t help himself.
“If we get beat down the floor again,” he threatened, “all five of you are coming out.”
One assumes that such defensive lapses will be cleaned up during practice this week. The Lady Bobcats have six days to prepare for No. 1 Samson and a game 31 years in the making.
“It’ll be a new atmosphere,” said Darby Elliott, who finished with 13 points on 5-for-7 shooting in Monday’s win. “But we all want to win. We’re determined to win.”
Thomas took it a step further.
“Everybody wants to win,” he said. “These girls have the will to win. They stepped up and took charge and did what it took to win. When it gets tough like that, you just gotta have the will to win. These girls showed that. They stepped up down here [in Hanceville]. They’ve been playing good all year, but they stepped it up another notch when we came down here.
“What they’re doing right now shows what they accomplished over the summer with all the work we did.”
In just one short year, Phil Campbell’s girls have gone from a losing record and a first-round loss to Red Bay in the area tournament to the brink of history. They’re two wins away from doing something that no team in program history has ever done. There’s only one thing Thomas can do next week in Birmingham to one-up CT.
“I’m gonna have to win it, man.”
