Danville girls ready to face tough area tourney

Three teams are ranked in the top 10 in the Danville girls basketball team’s area, but only two of them can move on to the playoffs.

The third-ranked Lady Hawks (23-4) don’t want to be the team that’s left out of the mix when the area tournament starts Thursday at Clements High School.

Coach Paul Wilson said this area tournament could be one of the best in the state.

“This is probably one of the toughest areas in the state,” Wilson said. “We have three teams ranked in the top 6 in Class 3A. There’s going to be a really good team that doesn’t even make it out of the area. We just hope that’s not us.”

Danville started its season with 13 consecutive wins before losing to No. 6 West Morgan on the road. The three other losses were to 6A Hazel Green, 5A Brewer and No. 2 Clements, who finished 5-1 in the area.

However, Danville has won its last four games going into Monday’s East Lawrence game.

During that streak, the Lady Hawks have faced a lot of adversity. In the county championship game with Brewer, Danville faced a seemingly insurmountable 19-point deficit to the casual fan, but Wilson’s team knew they still had a chance.

“There wasn’t any panic when we went in the locker room,” Wilson said. “All I said is that we have 16 minutes to undo what we did in the first half and that’s what we did.”

Wilson said that win has given his team confidence.

“You never want to get down by 19 in a game, but coming back from that, it does give us confidence that we can come back from it if we have to,” Wilson said.