Jeff Harrison The Edmond Sun

EDMOND — Beating a team three consecutive times can be tricky, but the Deer Creek girls made it look easy in Thursday night’s Class 5A Area Championship. The No. 8-ranked Lady Antlers blanketed No. 9 El Reno all night and earned their second straight trip to the state tournament with a 43-24 win at the Siberian Gym.

“We had a rough night against Noble and Southeast at regionals last week and I’m glad we stepped it up and finally won an Area championship,” Deer Creek senior A.J. Miller said. “Last week we were just expecting to win and we knew El Reno would be there the whole game so we decided to stay focused and step up our game.”

The Antlers have been stingy on defense all season, but they picked it up a notch against their conference rivals on Thursday.

“We worked all week on our defensive scheme and I thought our girls executed really well,” Deer Creek coach Totsy Manning said. “Parts of our game weren’t great, but we were in defensive position all night and that’s what we worked on that for three days. And to hold them to six points in the first half is pretty good.”

Miller and Ashley Gibson each scored 12 points to lead way for the Lady Antlers.

Deer Creek wasted no time getting after El Reno. Kelsey Glover hit a pair of 3-pointers and Jasey Jackson added another as they cruised to a 15-2 lead after the first eight minutes of play.

While the outside shots stopped falling in the second quarter, the Lady Antlers never let go of their commanding lead. They held El Reno to just four points in the second and took a 22-6 halftime lead.

Things continued to go the Lady Antlers way in the second half with the help of Gibson. The freshman gave her team a big offensive spark with six consecutive points pushing the lead to 20 with 4:41 in the third. Glover latter added a basket to give Deer Creek its largest lead of the night at 37-12.

El Reno mounted a small rally in the fourth quarter and cut the deficit to 17 with back-to-back 3-pointers from Hunter Hill and Morgan Gill. Deer Creek again clamped down defensively limiting El Reno to just one point in the final 2:44 to earn their second straight trip to state.

Hill paced the Lady Indians with 10 points and two treys.