By CHIP CIRILLO | Photos by STEVE WHEELER
Independence kept making runs, but never could catch Franklin.
The Lady Eagles narrowed the gap to five points three times in the fourth quarter, but the Lady Rebels held on for their sixth straight win with a 39-32 victory over visiting Independence on Friday night.
“Our kids, we’ve been in a lot of situations like that and we’ve handled it well,” Franklin coach Darrell Barnwell said. “We shot free throws well down the stretch when we needed to kind of hold them off as they had to foul. We talked about it, in our district every night’s going to be a battle.”
Point guard Jilian King led Franklin (13-5, 5-1 District 11-AAA) with nine points.
“I honestly feel like we are improving every game in our county,” King said. “We hit our free throws, which helped us finish the game.”
Franklin made 10 of 12 foul shots in the fourth quarter to hold off Independence (6-13, 1-6).
Point guard Kaitlyn Hearn led the Lady Eagles with 15 points and four 3-pointers, shooting 7 of 9 from the floor.
The junior made her first seven shots and her only misses came during the final 45 seconds as Independence rushed to make a comeback.
“I was just feeling it,” Hearn said. “My teammates were giving me the ball. I’ve been struggling the past few games just with hitting shots and they were just going in tonight.”
Lady Eagles coach Mary Beth White kept running sets to Hearn to get the ball in her hands.
“Hearn had a great night, White said. “It was like, give her the ball. We couldn’t knock down a shot at the right time, but we were pretty happy with our effort.”
Independence earned its first district win of the season the previous night at Brentwood.
“We still had a little energy coming off that,” White said. “We’re playing for February and we think we’ve come a long way in the last two days. Franklin is just so good defensively. They kind of sag off on you and really force you to knock down those perimeter shots.”
Franklin built a 12-point lead midway through the fourth quarter before Independence gradually worked its way back into the game.
The Lady Rebels are second in the district behind Dickson County (18-5, 7-0).
Independence is sixth in the seven-team district.
“We’ve got an interesting three-game stretch coming up,” Barnwell said. “We play Summit Wednesday and then play Dickson on Friday and then Summit again the next Tuesday. So, I think that little stretch there will give us an indication of where we’re at and where we might be able to finish as the district winds down.”
UP NEXT
Independence hosts Ravenwood on Tuesday.
Franklin visits Nolensville on Tuesday.
