Poirier's career night leads Lady Hornets past Southern

By: Ed Weaver  /  February 24, 2016

Sophomore Lizzie Poirier scored a game, season, and career-high 29 points to help the Wellsboro Girls Basketball team upset No. 2 seed Southern Columbia on Tuesday, February 23.

After scoring the game's first points, Wellsboro struggled for the rest of the quarter while Southern built up a 15-4 lead. The rally was on from there as the Lady Hornets settled down and Poirier heated up. Poirier scored 7 of the 29 in the second, senior Jada Jackson also added four, and Wellsboro outscored Southern 15-6 to close the gap to 21-19 at the end of the first half.

Wellsboro kept the intensity up in the third as they came out swining and outscored Southern 21-8. Poirier went off in the quarter with two three-pointers and four close-range shots for 14 in the quarter to push the score to 40-29.

"I've been off for the last couple of games so it's been good to get my shot back," Poirier said. "It was a total adrenaline rush out there."

The fourth was back and forth, with Southern outscoring Wellsboro by a point. Senior Sarah Ingerick scored 9 of her 11 points in the quarter and Wellsboro shot 11-for-18 down the stretch from the foul line to lock up the 59-49 win, and head to the District finals for the first time since 2004.

Poirier led all scorers with 29 and Jackson and Ingerick each finished with 11. Freshman Julia Smith scored 5 points, junior Janessa Davis had 2, and sophomore Rachael Tuttle pitched in with a point.

"We knew Southern would be physical and quick," said head coach John Davis. "It's hard to prepare for that style of play when you don't see it every night during the regular season but the girls did really well and fought back under some tough conditions."

To win the program's second Ditrict IV title (1978-79), the girls will need to knock off top seed Mount Carmel on Saturday, February 27 at Milton High School with tipoff coming at 6:00 p.m.

"Mount Carmel is very similar to Southern in that they're very physical and fast, and knowing that we can overcome that and play like we played tonight, I'm feeling very confident."