How Greenfield avoided collapse in final minutes to advance to TSSAA basketball Class 1A title game
MURFREESBORO ― Greenfield head coach Tori Liggett took a sigh of relief at the buzzer, following what she called the longest two minutes of her life.
Those two minutes, in which Greenfield's 10-point lead was sucked down to just five points, ultimately ended in an Annagrace Abernathy layup inside the final 10 seconds which secured the Lady Jackets a 47-40 win over Richland in the TSSAA girls basketball state tournament semifinals for Class 1A.
Greenfield advances to the Class 1A state championship game where it'll face Van Buren at 11 a.m. on Saturday at MTSU's Murphy Center. It's Greenfield's first state championship game appearance since 2018, after falling in the state semifinals to Moore County last season.
"They've got a lot of talent. They work hard. They're greedy and I think that's something that's important," Liggett said. "They had a little taste of winning last year when we came up here and they've said all along for the last two weeks, we're not settling until we come home with a Gold Ball ... I think that's what they intend to do tomorrow."
Sophomore sensation Rayanna Fisher starred from Greenfield, knocking down four 3-pointers on her way to a game-high 23 points, while Annagrace Abernathy added 13 points.
"It feels awesome," Fisher said. "We deserve it, we put in the work, so we just hope we can do it."
There were eight lead changes and six ties throughout Thursday's game, as Greenfield entered the fourth quarter deadlocked with Richland at 31, before outscoring the Lady Raiders 16-9 in the final frame.
Liggett credits regular season tests against district rivals Union City and Dresden as helping prepare the Lady Jackets for a back-and-forth battle like the one they found themselves in Thursday.
Greenfield split regular season games against Union City before falling by four points in the district semifinal, only to then turnaround and claim a four-point victory over Union City in the Region 7-1A semifinal.
"We had Dresden, who comes (to the state tournament) often and we also had Union City in our district this year. I felt like those games really prepared us for it because we battled each other all through the (substate) tournament ... every game was down to the wire, somebody's going to stall the ball, somebody's going to walk and make free throws, it was a game just like today."
Harrison Campbell covers high school sports for The Daily Herald and The Tennessean. Email him at hcampbell@gannett.com and follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @hccamp.
This article originally appeared on Jackson Sun: TSSAA girls basketball state tournament 2025: Greenfield advances
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