Photo by Jacques Morin
For anyone in attendance for the Orange women’s basketball game against South Granville on Friday, it was obvious who the best player on the floor was.
But it was no substitute for having the better team.
South Granville junior Lilah Penigar, a transfer from Panther Creek in Cary, scored a career-high 42 points and 16 rebounds against Orange. Her ubiquitous presence and ability led to the basics norms of basketball coaching being thrown straight out the window.
Vikings head coach Desmond Penigar watched his daughter pick up four fouls in the first half and never lifted a finger to replace her. If anything, Penigar was even more unrestrained in the second half, scoring 31 points in the second half without fouling out.
Yet it wasn’t enough to even give the Vikings the lead at any point in the game.
Orange sophomore Kassidy Tolliver finished with 22 points and 12 rebounds, her third straight double-double, as the Lady Panthers defeated the Vikings 70-54 in Hillsborough. Senior Maura McMurtry added 19 points and a season-high seven assists as Orange remained tied with Seaforth for first place in the Big 7 Conference with a 3-0 league record. The Lady Panthers improved to 8-5 overall.
South Granville (5-6, 2-1) entered the night tied with the Hawks and the Lady Panthers for first place, but came away with its first league loss.
Penigar has scored in double figures in all of South Granville’s eleven games, averaging 27.2 points per game. She had two games of 32 points this year against Vance Charter and Havelock.
Orange senior forward Natalie Roberson hit a 3-pointer off an assist from Alexis Stephens as the Lady Panthers jumped out to a 7-2 lead. Penigar responded with a 15-footer off a bounce pass from Avery Wilson. South Granville guard Aniya Johnson canned a 3-pointer, which led to the game’s only tie at 7-7.
Orange’s Lily Wilson quickly put Orange back out in front with her own 3-pointer, assisted by Roberson. Meanwhile, Penigar picked up her third foul with 1:42 remaining in the first quarter, but never left the game.
McMurtry scored consecutive field goals to build the Panther advantage to 18-12 before the Vikings’ Piper Van Ningen scored on a lay-in off a pass from Lisa Duke to end the opening quarter.
To open the second quarter, the Lady Panthers scored ten consecutive points, starting when Tolliver grabbed an offensive rebound and found McMurtry for a 3-pointer. Stephens created a basket in transition, stealing the ball from and finding Tolliver for a breakaway lay-up. Following two missed free throws by the Vikings, Roberson took a pass from McMurtry and sank another 3-pointer to increase the Panther lead to 28-14. The lead would stay in double-figures for the rest of the night.
South Granville shot 0-for-13 from the field in the second quarter. All three of its points came from the free throw line. On top of that, Penigar was ticketed for her fourth foul with nine seconds remaining in the first half.
Penigar didn’t single-handily bring the Vikings back in the second half, but not for a lack of trying. She scored 31 of South Granville’s 37 points in the final 16 minutes.
Tolliver stole the ball from Van Ningen and scored to open the second half. McMurtry followed with a lay-in to give Orange its largest lead of the game at 39-17.
Penigar nearly got the lead down to single-digits in the final minutes. She shot 17-of-23 from the free throw line, including two tosses to cut the Orange lead to 63-52 with 2:01 remaining.
Orange will take most of this week off for exams. They will travel to Oxford to face J.F. Webb on Friday night. It will be the Lady Panthers first trip to Oxford for a conference game since 2017.
