Rock Point gets a career-best from Arianne Begay, Lady Cougars to play for 1A title game

PRESCOTT VALLEY, Ariz.

The Rock Point girls basketball team is back to a familiar domain.

The Lady Cougars will play in another 1A state title game as it got a career-best 38 points from senior post Arianne Begay Friday night to post an 59-35 win over No. 4 seed Fort Thomas Lady Apaches.

Top-seed Rock Point will play No. 2 seed Joseph City at 4 p.m. today at the Findlay Toyota Center in Prescott Valley, Arizona.

“I didn’t think I was going to score that much because the last time we played them I wasn’t hitting anything,” said Begay, whose previous best was 34 points.

In that previous meeting in mid-December, Begay said Fort Thomas freshman Kaylee Benally was locked in on her as she was held to 11 points.

“She did a good job of guarding me,” 6-foot-1 post said.

But in Friday’s game, Begay found her range and helped erase an early 4-0 deficit with an old-fashion three-point play and a pair of treys.

Her second trey earned Rock Point a 16-10 cushion heading into second.

“When she hit those 3s, man, that sparked up the girls and we just ran with it,” Rock Point coach Andrew Reed said.

Reed said he was not surprised that Fort Thomas started off strong, but he was happy that his club was able to respond.

“We knew they were going to come out strong,” he said. “They’ve been after us for the last four, five years. We have a lot of respect for them because they’re a good ball club.”

Begay added another dozen in the second stanza as Rock Point lead 34-24 at the break.

The margin was pushed to 44-31 going into the fourth.

“They stayed with us for the first half, and in the second half we played our game,” Reed said. “Once we started to open our game, we just opened it up.”

Fort Thomas Lee Haws said Begay was the ‘X-factor’ that did them in.

“She killed us tonight,” Haws said. “She had four 3s and 23 points at halftime. She was getting to the rim, getting to the hole posting up and she was hitting free throws.

“She just hurt us tonight,” he added.

As opposed to its previous meeting with Rock Point, Haws said there were two factors that favored the Lady Cougars.

“They had a lot more energy,” he said. “And their scoring was more evenly distributed to where two girls had 11 and one girl had 10 and another had seven.

“Tonight, the girl had 36 of their 59 points,” Haws said. “She just went off.”

Fort Thomas had one player reach double figures with sophomore Jayla Wilson scoring 12 while Tyesha Wilson added nine and Alleena Gilbert chipped in eight.

And while she had a big night, Begay credited the play of guards Sasha Chee, Tayleen Woody and Rainee Bahe.

“Our defense is led by our guards,” Begay said. “I know they get tired, but they push themselves. We just stayed in front and we kept the momentum with our defense.”

Going into today’s matchup, the Rock Point post is expecting Joseph City to be aggressive as the Cougars are seeking its third state crown.

“They’re going to full-court press us,” Begay said. “We have enough ball handlers to handle that, and we’re going to push for another state title.”

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