Clinton, South Carolina, Friday, February 23, 2018, 9:35 a.m.

The Laurens Academy girls’ basketball team reminds me of my Honda Accord.

Both wear blue and are approximately the same age. The Lady Crusaders have made three successful round trips to Sumter. The Honda has made two, with a side trip to Camden, on a single tank of fuel.

Late last night, the fuel light activated as I exited Interstate 26, having achieved 33 miles per gallon of gasolina. Earlier, Laurens Academy, coached by Jason Marlett with Sandy Moore’s assistance, returned home from Wilson Hall Academy after defeating Curtis Baptist, 33-21, and earning a berth in the South Carolina Independent Schools Association (SCISA) Class A state finals.

The Lady Crusaders are 30-1. The only loss was to Fort Mill, a Class 5A public school. The Honda occasionally moves aside for the benefit of a large SUV such as a Cadillac Escalade.

Both the Honda and the Lady Crusaders are reliable. In the semifinals, Curtis Baptist, a SCISA member in spite of being located in Augusta, Georgia, tested LA physically but wasn’t as sound. Neither team scored until Taylor Campbell put LA up, 4-0, with consecutive baskets nearly halfway through the first quarter. The other Lady Crusaders, the Georgians, the ones with a record of 21-4, never again got closer than three.

Campbell, who will play basketball next year at Newberry College, is a pleasure to watch. I expect she is as competitive as Richard the Lionhearted in the Crusader department, though he died in 1199 and I never saw him play.

In the second quarter, both she and Ruthie Moore, a junior, seemed frazzled and frustrated. The Georgians played them hard. Moore got pushed and shoved a lot, but she managed to lead LA with 13 points to Campbell’s 10. At times, Marlett took her out for a bit of rest, and I thought, she might just just make it after all, and then he’d put her back in on the next whistle, and I’d think, well, she’s never going to make it, but she did.

Three Robinson sisters — Shania, Dynazsa, and Destini — spent most of their time guarding Campbell and Moore closely. Two of them fouled out.

If the Georgians could have hit water from a boat, the game would have been closer, but the splashes were few and far between — 8-41 from the floor — and the figurative width of the Savannah River (which separates Georgia from South Carolina) grew greater in the waning minutes of the navigation.

Now the Laurens Academy girls and my Honda have one more trip to Sumter to make. On Saturday afternoon, the Lady Crusaders, the South Carolinians, will face Patrick Henry Academy, the Patriots of Estill, for the state championship. The game will be played at Sumter County Civic Center, beginning at 2:30 p.m.

Here’s the story on the game I wrote at GoLaurens.com from a nearby McDonald’s, where the coffee is hot and the Wi-Fi reliable.

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