OKLAHOMA CITY — This was vintage ‘Darko defense at its finest.
Suffocating. Relentless. 110 percent effort on every possession.
Anadarko picked up in Saturday’s state championship game right where it left off in the semifinals, where the Warriors didn’t allow a single fourth quarter field goal.
‘Darko’s 54-49 state title victory over Muldrow was even more impressive as the Warriors snagged 15 steals and forced 34 turnovers, 10 of which came at the hands of star post player Taylen Collins, who has several Power 5 Conference recruiting offers.
The Lady Warriors — who held opponents to 32 points per game during the state title campaign — have long played with an edge defensively and they enjoy it, too — unlike most teams who tend to sleep on that end of the court.
It all stems from their competitive nature getting after it with teammates.
“It’s always way more about defense than offense with us and we’re super competitive against each other. We almost want to make each other mad.” said Averi Zinn, who had five steals. “Since we always are going against each other when we come in here against a different team, we all come together.
“It’s all against one.”
Muldrow had five turnovers in the first two minutes of the second quarter alone as Bulldogs coach Jana Armer burned timeout after timeout trying to calm her flustered players, who couldn’t handle the Warriors’ in-your-face ball pressure.
“It’s tiring. It’s hard. You need to be well-conditioned,” Lexi Foreman said. “We had to get all over the ball, pressure them to speed them up and caused them to get in their heads and they’d just throw it away.”
Every mounting turnover only made the Warriors grin from ear-to-ear more, sensing their pressure was getting under the Bulldogs’ skin, as it does with most teams.
Speeding Muldrow up worked to perfection as the Bulldogs began to tire.
“These kids are just so competitive,” coach Zinn said. “At about the 80-foot mark, we had to start causing indecision. We also had to get Muldrow fatigued and I saw some of their players hanging over in the third quarter. I thought we had enough body blows like in boxing to where at some point they would break.”
The Bulldogs broke, coughing up seven more turnovers in the fourth quarter when trying to mount a comeback.
Opponents can’t come back when they can’t score on oppressive defenses like ‘Darko which don’t yield an inch of breathing room.
They say that ‘defense wins championships’ but it’s really defense like ‘Darko's that wins meaningful games in March.
This stellar performance brought home the storied basketball program's third Gold Ball.
And the Warriors found out that winning state championships is an indescribable rush.
“Winning it all with these girls is awesome — we’re super close,” said Averi Zinn. “I wouldn’t want to win it with anyone else.”
Anadarko joins the 2005 and 2012 Warriors as state champions and chances are this squad could repeat in 2020 as the talented youth continues to blossom.
“That 2012 team was incredible and had some great, great players,” coach Zinn said. “This championship team has a bunch of young players who are just kind of coming into their roles now.”
Of course, winning championships becomes a lot simpler when playing ‘Darko defense.
“It’s awesome,” Averi Zinn said of winning a state championship as a junior. I can’t wait to keep it going.”
