“It was just two good teams,” said Golden Flashes coach Michael Cole, whose team is 9-3, 5-1 and has won seven straight games. “They posed so many problems for us, and I mean we posed problems for them. I knew it was going to be right down to the wire. Just what I expected. It could go either way. I thought at the end we threw a little press and forced them to speed it up. They tried to slow it down a little bit and the girls just played hard, both teams.”

Liberty (9-5, 3-3) led by seven points after the third quarter and had a comfortable lead midway through the fourth, but Champion stormed back — outscoring the Leopards 23-9 in the final quarter.

“We put the full-court press on them,” Cole said. “I think that caused a few turnovers, we made some opportune shots. You’ve got two good teams, it (stinks) somebody’s got to lose. They really outplayed us for probably three of those four quarters, and we just kept close enough and finished the last 3 minutes.”

Each team had two players reach 20 points or more. Sharda Williamson and Nevaeh Dixon each scored 20 for the Leopards.

Tribune Chronicle / Brian Yauger Liberty’s Jakyia Davis defends Emma Gumont of Champion during Wednesday’s game.

“We played a tough game until the end,” Liberty coach Deidre Watson said. “We had too many turnovers and ultimately that lost us the game. We have to be more careful with the ball.”

Emma Gumont and Abby White were the 20-point scorers for Champion. Gumont and White scored 23 and 21, respectively. Brooke Whitt added 14 for Champion.

Williamson was a two-way dynamo for the Leopards throughout the game. Including her 20 points, she also made crucial defensive stops — being a major catalyst for Liberty’s run during the third quarter.

“Sharda doesn’t stop, I say that all the time,” Watson said. “Sharda plays both ends of the court. She hustles. She’s never tired. I never see her huffing and puffing. She’s just a machine.”

The win for Champion pushes them up the standings in a contested Blue Tier, which is still anybody’s game midway through the season.

Next up for the Leopards is a trip down to Columbiana to take on Crestview, while Champion heads to Newton Falls to take on the Blue Tier-leading Tigers. Champion and Liberty square off one more time to close off the season in a game that could have the Blue Tier title on the line.

“They always play a little bit better up there,” Cole said. “Hopefully we learned a few things from today. They’re really quick. We’re usually a really fast team, but not tonight. They’ve just got so much team speed where our one forward (Emma) Gumont who’s always going coast-to-coast. She’s getting the ball tipped away from behind, they were catching up to her. They’ve just got a lot of speed and it posed a lot of problems for us tonight.”