SPANISH FORT, Ala. – The Lady Tigers of Baldwin County went 3-0 to finish on top of the Spanish Fort Christmas Bash girls round-robin basketball tournament at SFHS last week.

The BCHS girls defeated the host Lady Toros team 39-35 to complete the round-robin format with a perfect record.

Both teams won their first two games to make the final a battle of unbeatens. Spanish Fort and BCHS defeated Navarre's (Fla.) Raiders and Bakers' Hornets before meeting each other on the final night of the three-day event. Baker went 1-2 with its only win, a 52-51 thriller over the Raiders, who finished 0-3.

In the final, BCHS led much of the game and by eight points as late as mid-fourth quarter but had to survive a burst of scoring and improved accurate free-throw shooting by Spanish Fort to maintain the lead for the four-point victory. Earlier in the game, both teams had struggled at the line.

Latreka Jenkins led the Lady Tigers with 11 points with teammates CoCo Knight adding nine and Kantrell Bush recording eight. Spanish Fort was led by Allison Whitley with 12 and Brianna Owens with seven. Elissa VandeWaa who usually scores in double digits for the Lady Toros was held to just three, but it was a 3-pointer that kept the late run going in the final minute of the fourth.

The Lady Tigers are off until Jan. 4 when they host McGill-Toolen for a big 6A Area 4 contest at 6 p.m. in Bay Minette. Spanish Fort is taking part in the 16th annual Hilton Sandestin basketball tournament in Florida this week.

Baldwin County High head coach Robert Wills said he was proud of his team, especially how they handled the late pressure and a spate of turnovers the Spanish Fort defense was good at causing.

“That's the best that we've played against the zone all year long,” he said. “And Spanish Fort knows what it's doing in the zone. I was very proud of our girls tonight, they had a good effort.”

Wills said it was almost a repeat of the game against Navarre the night before when BCHS took and held the lead but had to withstand a tough, sustained rally by the Raiders for a 51-48 BCHS win.

“We just didn't finish on Tuesday night against Navarre,” he said. “We were up by nine points with two minutes left and we win by three points. We went 0-for-7 there at the free-throw line. We had a team meeting after that game and our position going into the game this evening was that we weren't going to get down. We weren't going to have any negative attitudes and we were just going to be positive.”

Lady Toros coach Justin Moore said poor free-throw shooting down the stretch may have cost his team the game.

“That's the difference in the ballgame,” Moore said. “We hit our free throws in the fourth quarter, we're right there in it.”

He also said his team failed to convert turnovers into points as well as they are capable.

“Baldwin County has a good basketball team and they have athletes but we came to win it,” Moore said. “We just made too many mistakes and didn't take advantage of things when Baldwin County had miscues. We squandered too many opportunities. We have no one to blame but ourselves. We have to look in the mirror on this one.”

The Lady Tigers led 20-16 by halftime and later extended it to 27-16 mid-way into the third period and were ahead 31-23 by the start of the fourth.

But the Lady Toros never quit attacking closing the gap to five points twice before cutting it to three points twice with less than a minute to play in regulation. But Jenkins went 3-for-4 on her back-to-back trips to the free throw line with 1:21 remaining to make it an eight-point game again 36-28 Baldwin County.

With 58 seconds left VandeWaa then hit the three to make it 36-31. BCHS then went cold at the line and Owens scored two at the Spanish Fort end to make it 36-33 with 39 seconds remaining.

But Knight then scored for BCHS to keep it a two-possession game with 24 seconds to go.

Missed free throws at both ends kept it interesting as Owens scored again to make it 38-35 with six seconds left. But Bush made 1-of-2 free throws and preserved the Baldwin County win. It was the Lady Tiger's 12th victory of the year with just two losses going into the new year.

Spanish Fort closed the tournament with a 9-4 mark.