DeSoto girls defeat Cypress Creek in 6A state basketball championship to win first title in program history

SAN ANTONIO — Coach Andrea Robinson made an impassioned plea to her players as she addressed them before the biggest game in DeSoto girls basketball history Thursday night.

“Seize the moment,” Robinson said. “It was our time.”

It didn’t matter that DeSoto was facing an undefeated team that was ranked No. 1 in the state and featured two McDonald’s All-Americans. DeSoto desperately wanted to bring home its first state championship after a heartbreaking defeat in the state final two years ago.

“I’ve been saying this for a while. We lost our moment a couple of years ago when we came here. We were casual about it. I just felt like this was our moment,” Robinson said.

After the most challenging season in history, a moment that will be cherished forever at DeSoto occurred as the state’s second-ranked team brought the ball up the court for the final time in the Class 6A state championship game. Fans counted down the final seconds, then watched as DeSoto players stormed the court to embrace each other to celebrate a stunning one-sided 53-37 victory over Cypress Creek at the Alamodome.

Houston signee Kendall Brown scored a team-high 12 points, and four-star junior forward Sa’Myah Smith had 10 points and 14 rebounds and was named the MVP of the game as DeSoto (28-2) dominated the second half. After trailing by 11 early in the second quarter, DeSoto outscored the seventh-ranked team in the nation 45-18 the rest of the way.

DeSoto was 0-2 in state finals before Thursday, including a 49-46 loss to Converse Judson in the 2019 title game, but it has a coach who knows what it takes to win the ultimate prize in high school sports.

Robinson won state championships as the coach at Fort Worth Dunbar in 2005 and 2007, with McDonald’s All-American Brooklyn Pope recording a triple-double in the 2007 title game. And Robinson brought DeSoto its first girls basketball state title after her son Shawn was the star quarterback and her husband, Othell, was an assistant coach for DeSoto in 2016 when it won the first football state title in school history.

“It means everything,” Robinson said. “I’m glad we were able to do this for the community. DeSoto has been waiting a long time for this state championship.”

Cypress Creek was averaging 76 points per game, and its lowest point total of the season had been 53, but that was before it faced a DeSoto team that plays extraordinary perimeter defense and has three dominant 6-footers lurking in the paint to swat away shots. Cypress Creek trailed by three at halftime, but then shot 5-for-36 (13.9%) from the field in the second half while scoring just 13 points over the final two quarters.

Cypress Creek was allowing an average of 33.8 points per game. DeSoto had 38 points — and an eight-point lead — by the end of the third quarter.

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Robinson worried at one point that her team wouldn’t have a chance to play for a state championship, fearing that the season could get shut down as COVID-19 numbers began to rise. DeSoto also lost three guards, including two players committed to Texas Tech, to torn ACL injuries. And the pandemic robbed the team of its invaluable offseason program, forced the team to scrap its plans to travel out of state to play some big-time national opponents, and most importantly, kept players apart for an extended period of time.

“This is probably the toughest team I’ve ever coached,” Robinson said. “People have no idea some of the things they’ve been through.”

McDonald’s All-Americans Rori Harmon and Kyndall Hunter had been unstoppable while leading Cypress Creek to a 32-0 start this season and a 73-1 record over the last two years. But the 5-6 Harmon and 5-9 Hunter had not had to contend with the height that DeSoto possessed, with 6-5 Kentucky pledge Tionna Herron, the 6-4 Smith and 6-4 Amina Muhammad.

DeSoto’s three four-star recruits combined for 24 points and 24 rebounds. Harmon and Hunter combined to score 25 points, but the two Texas signees did it on 10-for-33 shooting as Cypress Creek couldn’t win its first state title or become the 23rd team in UIL history to go undefeated.

“These two can break pressure all day, but you’ve got multiple kids at 6-foot plus coming at them. It just made it difficult for them,” Cypress Creek coach Jennifer Alexander said.

Senior guard Ariyanna Hines provided a huge spark for DeSoto off the bench by hitting two 3-pointers in the first half, and she finished with eight points and four assists. She also played outstanding defense as DeSoto’s guards forced Harmon and Hunter into one contested shot after another and limited the duo to nine points in the second half.

“If they were going to win that game, those two had to put up good numbers,” said Brown, who had three steals. “We knew if we shut them down, it was going to be hard for them to come out with the win.”

DeSoto held defending state champion Duncanville to a season-low 39 points in the regional final by playing strictly zone defense, then used both the zone and a full-court press to defeat South Grand Prairie 63-52 in the state semifinal. DeSoto had a new look waiting for Cypress Creek, having guards play tight man-to-man and get up right in the face of Harmon and Hunter, then switching defenders if necessary to ensure that someone followed them wherever they went.

“We tried not to let them go off from the 3-point line, and tried to keep them to one shot attempt,” Smith said.

Harmon, a five-star recruit who is ranked by ESPN’s HoopGurlz as the 10th-best player in America in the Class of 2021, finished with eight points, 11 rebounds and five assists, but she was 4-of-15 from the field and had seven turnovers. Hunter scored a game-high 17 points, but shot just 6-for-18.

Cypress Creek grabbed 20 offensive rebounds and took 16 more shots than DeSoto. But that was offset by the fact that Cypress Creek committed 19 turnovers and shot 3-for-16 from 3-point range, including 1-for-12 in the second half.

DeSoto is ranked No. 11 in the nation by MaxPreps, but it struggled to score early against Cypress Creek’s zone defense and fell behind 19-8 early in the second quarter. It was a completely different game from there.

DeSoto closed the half on a 19-5 run to take a 27-24 lead into halftime. A three-point play by Brown with 57.2 seconds left in the half gave DeSoto its first lead, 25-24, and Herron added a layup to make it a three-point advantage.

Cypress Creek had not faced adversity all season, winning by an average of 42.7 points, and it didn’t respond well once DeSoto surged ahead. After Hunter’s layup brought her team to within 29-26 early in the third quarter, Cypress Creek scored just four points over the next eight minutes as DeSoto built a 40-30 lead.

The UIL limited capacity to a maximum of 3,500 for each championship game because of COVID-19, and fans were required to wear a mask. No official attendance figure was announced, but DeSoto had a boisterous cheering section that got louder and louder as their team made a parade to the free throw line over the final five minutes, going 9-for-12 to put the game away.

DeSoto didn’t get to cut down the nets at the Alamodome because of COVID-19 restrictions. But the team had a long celebration planned. Literally.

“We are going to stay up forever,” Robinson said.

Robinson was also going to make good on a couple of promises she had made before the game. Because DeSoto won, the players could eat anything they wanted. And Smith and her teammates were going to get to ride in a horse-drawn carriage at the team’s hotel.

Photos: History made! DeSoto girls capture their first state basketball title

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Teams in the current District 11-6A have combined to win 14 girls basketball state titles in the last 25 years.

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