Every time Urbana got an edge on No. 4 Milford Mill in Saturday night's Class 3A state girls basketball championship, Millers senior guard Dionna White had an answer.
The three-time All-Metro selection rallied her teammates from as many as nine points down in the first half and finished the game by harassing the Hawks' best player, guard Kendall Bresee, into missing a potential game-winning 3-pointer in the final seconds of a 74-70 victory.
"It feels great," White said. "I think it was more exciting because it was close, and that made it seem more like a championship game."
White scored 25 points and had 11 rebounds, six assists and eight steals as the Millers (25-1) repeated as Class 3A champions at Towson University's SECU Arena.
"She is a very talented player," Urbana coach Kathryn Linehan said, "and we knew she was the real deal coming in, not just offensively, but defensively as well. She is very tenacious and … on both ends she gave us trouble. She is their senior and their leader. … She had a fantastic game tonight."
Just as she has since the beginning of the playoffs, White got tremendous help from her teammates Saturday night. Senior forward Deja McKenzie scored 23 points and had seven rebounds. Senior point guard Taylor Bolden added eight assists and had four steals. Junior forward Kierra Jackson finished with 10 points.
In a game that featured 20 lead changes and two teams that each shot over 46percent from the field, the Millers took the lead and never again trailed after White fed McKenzie, who converted a three-point play for a 63-61 edge with 4:02 left.
White then got her hand on a Hawks pass, which Taylor Bolden grabbed and passed back to White for a layup and a 65-63 lead. The Hawks cut it to one twice, then tied it at 70 on Maddie Cederdahl's runner with 42 seconds remaining.
But White hit both ends of the double bonus at the foul line to push the lead to 72-70 with 38.6 seconds left. The Hawks had two chances to tie or take the lead but missed both shots, the last a 3-point attempt by Bresee with White in her face.
White "was all over me," Bresee said, "so I was just trying to get the ball up. There was 22 seconds when we brought the ball down the court, though. Whatever you had to throw up, you had to throw up to try to get that score tied."
The Millers struggled much of the game to contain Bresee, a 5-foot-10 junior guard who also could dominate the paint. Bresee scored 25 of her 28 points in the first three quarters but picked up her fourth foul a minute into the fourth quarter and sat for three minutes.
Bresee probably would not have taken the final shot had Regan Lohr not fouled out of the game with 22 seconds left. The junior guard was the Hawks' top perimeter shooter and had hit two of four 3-pointers in the game.
Linehan questioned whether the foul was Lohr's fifth. The officials said it was, but the postgame stat sheet showed her having just four. Still, Lohr was gracious afterward, saying she might have missed the shot anyway and that her teammates were also capable of hitting it. Bresee had hit three of five 3-pointers earlier in the game.
The Hawks (21-6) scored six straight points to open the second quarter. Bresee's pull-up 3-pointer gave them a 28-22 edge with 5:45 left. Milford Mill coach DeToiya McAliley called a timeout, and the Millers responded with a layup from White, but Bresee hit a 3-pointer and a follow to boost Urbana's lead to 33-24, the biggest advantage of the game for either team.
White then rallied the Millers, having a hand in 11 straight points. She had two steals and converted both and fed McKenzie twice and Makayla Pollard once for layups as the Millers took a 35-33 lead on McKenzie's three-point play with 1:22 left before halftime. Urbana's Regan Lohr converted a turnover into a buzzer-beating layup to give the Hawks a 37-35 halftime lead.
Milford Mill, which has been to the state tournament 11 times, won its third state title since 2005, the year McAliley took over the program. The Millers seniors depart with two state titles and four Baltimore County championships.
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