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EspañolANDREWS – It’s been a long time since Andrews girls basketball made a West regional final.
Yet for coach Tim Wood, it’s still coming earlier than he anticipated.
The Wildcats won a state championship in 1977, the first year the NCHSAA went to a four-class playoff in girls basketball. Half a century later, Andrews is close to doing it again.
The No. 6 Wildcats (19-10) returned to the 1A West regional final for the second time in program history, weathering a third-quarter scoring drought to hold off No. 10 Summit Charter (18-12) for a 46-42 fourth-round victory March 2.
“We knew we had a golden opportunity,” Wood said. “We’d seen the writing on the wall with this group of girls. We expected to be here, we just didn’t think it would be this quick.”
Andrews will face conference rival Robbinsville for the fourth time this season in the regional final. The game will tip off at 3 p.m. March 5 at Lenoir-Rhyne University. The Wildcats won the first three matchups, including a neutral site conference tournament win at Murphy.
The past several years, a run to a 1A regional final would’ve required an encounter with either Cherokee, one of the state’s best teams, or Bishop McGuinnes. Both are now 2A schools. Mountain Heritage, a 3A school in 2026, was also in the fourth round the past two seasons. A team like Andrews had no path to a deep playoff run.
“Us small schools, we all feel like it should have happened years ago,” Wood said.
Now, with the classes balanced out, 225-student Andrews is making history.
Even with a more palatable postseason path, Wood has a young team that he thought was still a few years away from a run like this. All but two points came from sophomores and juniors against Summit Charter, marking the early arrival of a team that should be here to stay for several years.
“We had a several-year plan,” Wood said. “We were talking to the girls earlier – we’re ahead of schedule. We expected to be here two or three years from now.”
Sophomore Knox Davis and junior Marley Blackwell gave the Wildcats into an early lead, making three 3-pointers each in the first and second quarters, respectively. But after going into halftime up 15 points, the lead evaporated in the third quarter when Andrews scored just two points.
But as Wood said, Andrews has been through the fire this season.
Davis and Blackwell each scored five in the fourth quarter, finishing with 17 and 14 points, respectively, to close out the win.
“Playing those harder teams like Cherokee, it builds you up,” Blackwell said. “It gets you ready for the teams that play like us.”
Evan Gerike is the high school sports reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @EvanGerike.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: How Andrews girls basketball made return to 1A West final after 50 years