MOULTRIE – The Colquitt County girls basketball team took advantage of its tie-breaker over Tift County and will play host to the Region 1-6A tournament play-in game.
The Lady Packers and Lady Devils will meet for the third time this season at 6 p.m. on Monday on the William Bryant Court.
The winner of the game between the No. 4 and No. 5 seeds will advance to play the region’s top seed on Wednesday in the first round of the tournament.
The region championship game will be held on Friday.
Monday’s winning team also will earn a berth in the Class 6A state tournament, which will run Feb. 18-19.
Colquitt’s girls have qualified for state each of the last nine seasons.
Colquitt finished 4-6 in the region and Tift is 3-6 heading into its Saturday regular-season finale at home against Valdosta.
Even if the Lady Devils defeat Valdosta and finish 4-6, Colquitt owns the tie-breaker and will take fourth place and the home court advantage for Monday’s game.
The Lady Packers won by 12, 46-34, when the two teams met on January 28 in Moultrie.
The Lady Devils had won at home, but only by 11, 47-36, on January 17.
The one-point differential was enough to give the Lady Packers a chance to host the play-in game.
The Lady Packers started this season 8-0, but have gone just 7-7 since then.
“There have been a lot of ups and downs this season,” first-year head coach Stephanie Cody said. “Hopefully, we’ll all be on the same page on Monday.”
The Packers have relied all season on the scoring of a pair of seniors: Amira Walters-Smith and Amareyia Knighton.
Walters-Smith, an all-state selection last season, is averaging 19.0 points a game.
In the victory at Valdosta in the final regular-season game of the season, she was honored after scoring the 2,000th point of her career.
She is an outstanding long-range shooter who is not afraid of driving to the basket.
Walters-Smith scored just seven points in the game the Lady Packers lost to Tift County, but had 20 in the win over the Lady Devils.
Knighton is averaging 12.9 points a game. In the Lady Packers second game of the season, she went over 1,000 points in her Colquitt County career, just the 10th Lady Packer to do it.
Knighton scored 18 and seven points in the two games against Tift County.
Fellow seniors Ta’Meria Williams and Caylnn Singletary and sophomore Nacardia Robinson round out the Lady Packer starting five.
“We have got to execute our offense, box out and play to our strengths,” Cody said of her team.
Tift County had a chance to claim the No. 4 spot in the region by winning on Friday and Saturday, but lost to Camden County at home on Friday.
The Lady Devils are 9-13 overall under longtime coach Julie Conner Johnson.
“Tifton is always very confident, very scrappy and they crash the boards well,” Cody said.
Jalaya Miller was Tift’s leading scorer in both games against Colquitt County with 15 in the first game and 11 in the second.