FRANKLIN—The Franklin High school Lady Broncos (7-3) pulled out a come-from-behind nail biter to beat the Surry High Lady Cougars (4-4) 70-69 Thursday Night in a Tri-Rivers District game. Both teams came into the contest 1-0 in the Tri-Rivers District.

“A W is a W,” said Franklin’s head coach Mona Sumblin, “and I will take it any way I can get it.”

Franklin won the jump ball but was unable to capitalize on the possession as the Lady Broncos quickly turned the ball over. It was Surry’s Britney Johnson who scored first off of a lay-up, which began a 5-point run by the Lady Cougars.

It was Keshara Bradley who ended the streak for the Lady Broncos with an uncontested 3-point shot from the top of the arch. The first quarter seemed to belong to the Lady Cougars as the quarter concluded with the score being 19-15 in Surry’s favor.

“We knew Surry had some good players, and they do,” said Sumblin. “They have a transfer from Kentucky and she has game.“

The Lady Broncos came back onto the court to begin the second quarter on an 8-point run that lasted the first 2:30 of the quarter. The second quarter was all Broncos offense as the Lady Broncos outscored the Lady Cougars 21-14.

The half ended with the Lady Broncos leading 36-33.

As both teams came back on the court after halftime it was evident that the coaches wanted to focus on defense as both teams stepped up their defenses. Both teams had 10 or more blocked shots and rebounds, and each team had at least 5 steals. The quarter ended with the Lady Broncos leading 53-49.

The fourth quarter was where the game began to shape up as a nail bitter, as the Lady Broncos were forced to call a timeout after Surry went on a 7-point run with 6:44 left on the game clock.

It was Bradley who hit her 2nd 3-pointer of the night to tie the score up at 58 points a piece with 4 minutes left in the game. Franklin was forced to call another time out as Pashawn Hunt was forced to fall on the ball to recover after a bad pass to retain possession with 2:42 left in the game.

With only 1:09 left on the game clock Franklin went up 70-64. Surry then went on a 5-point run to put the score at 70-69 off of a 3-point shot by Raechaun Edwards with 11 seconds left on the game clock.

Franklin brought the ball back into play and was unable to maintain control as Surry recovered the ball off of a rebound and put it in the hands of Edwards who shot the ball from behind the 3-point line at the buzzer and bounced off the rim.

“Our girls stepped up there at the end,” said Sumblin, “we tried to kill the clock, but we just couldn’t get the ball into play. And these are little things that we are going to have to work on, to be able to end the game so that we don’t get into situations like this, and free throws we definitely have got to make free throws, these are the key areas we still need to work on.

Hunt led the Lady Broncos with 17 points and went 83 percent from within the paint, Bradley had 16 points and Kiara Lee had 11 points.

Johnson who had 26 points on the evening led Surry.

Franklin travels to Windsor for their next on Tuesday for a Tri-Rivers District match-up game time is 7

p.m., with JV playing at 5:30 p.m.