FULTON — It was a championship type of game between two strong defensive teams when Lewis Cass squared off with Caston on Wednesday night.It was just a first-round game of the Logansport Savings Bank Cass County Tournament, but the winner would be a heavy favorite in Saturday night’s final.The Lady Kings emerged with a hard-fought 44-39 win over the Lady Comets to advance to the championship game.It was a back-and-forth contest that went down to the wire. The Lady Kings improved to 6-0 by outplaying the Comets (4-4) down the stretch.Aftin Griffin sank a basket at the third-quarter buzzer to give Cass a 33-31 lead entering the fourth.Griffin later drilled her fourth 3-pointer of the game to give the Kings the lead for good at 36-33 with 7:15 left. Anna Hedrick knocked down a pair of free throws to push the lead to five.Madi Douglass came up with a defensive rebound and went coast-to-coast for an and-one to cut the lead to 38-35 with 5:08 left. She missed the free throw but Adyson Steininger came up with the offensive rebound.But Griffin later came up with a steal on the possession. Ava Hubner fed Laney Davis for a score to push the Cass lead back to five.Douglass answered with a driving bucket. But the Kings again pushed the lead to five when Presley Johnson scored on an inbounds pass from Hubner with 3:35 left.Douglass again finished at the basket, this time with her left hand, to cut it to 42-39 with 1:10 remaining.But Griffin answered with a driving score of her own and finished through contact to push the lead to five with 45 seconds left. Griffin was temporarily injured and left the game before later returning. Davis shot the free throw and missed.The Comets’ final shot of the game was a 3-point attempt that was off the mark by Grace Colvin. The Kings rebounded and were able to dribble out the final seconds on the clock.Griffin led the Kings with 16 points. She was 4 of 8 from 3-point range, while the rest of the Lady Kings combined to shoot 0 of 14 from distance.Johnson added 13 points on 6 of 8 shooting from the field, doing all of her damage in the paint besides one of her baskets being a three-point play.Anna Hedrick steadied the team from the point, adding six points while controlling the tempo and guiding the offense. Other contributors included Marina Melian with four points, Davis and Paula Pons with two each, and Lexi Gotshall with one. Hedrick also paced the team with six rebounds and collected a team-high three steals. Hubner and Pons led the way in distribution with four and five assists, respectively.Colvin led the Comets with 17 points and four assists. The sophomore guard shot 3 of 8 from 3-point range. She scored the game’s first 10 points when the Comets jumped out to a 10-0 lead. The Kings didn’t get on the board until a Johnson basket with 2:29 left in the first quarter.Caston led 12-6 after one before Cass took a 21-19 lead at halftime and 33-31 lead after three.Douglass entered averaging 16 points and 8 rebounds per game and she finished with a double-double of 13 points and 10 boards for the Comets. She added four assists and two steals.Hadlie Coffing added three points and five boards. Lone senior Camila Hernandez-Rios had two points and two steals. Natalie Warner and Allison Craig chipped in two points apiece.Cass coach Kyle Amor was just happy to come away with the win.“You spot a team 10 points and you never know,” he said. “It’s a hard place to win. They are a team led by a really good guard with Madi Douglas. But we were able to take that punch to the mouth and respond. Credit our kids, I thought they had a gutsy night despite shooting maybe 20% from the field. So I’m proud of how our girls overcame.”The Kings unofficially shot 38% from the field but just 18% from the 3-point line. They were also just 4 of 10 from the foul line. Amor thought the snowfall that caused the cancellation of school on Monday and Tuesday contributed to the cold shooting night.“It’s one of those weird weeks. The weather this early in basketball hardly ever affects us, and this was one of those times where we got a ton of snow. We haven’t been at practice since Saturday morning, and I think it showed,” he said. “I think our shooting wasn’t there. I thought our touch on the basket wasn’t quite there. But the girls were gritty and gutsy and they overcame some adversity.”Johnson, a 5-11 sophomore, helped bail the Kings out with a career-high 13 points.“She was a great spark off the bench and that’s why we started her in the second half,” Amor said. “We needed to match up with their size a little bit and Presley does that at 4 for us. And she’s a kid that can score. She was a guard until this year. She’s been a guard, so she’s a kid that she can step out and shoot it as well. She had a big game. We’re awful proud of her.”It was a battle of 2-3 zone defenses. After the Comets’ hot start, the Kings outscored them 44-29 over the final 27 minutes.“We knew 12 (Colvin) was a great shooter and she was our focus on running her off the line,” Amor said. “We knew Madi can get to the rim whenever she wanted. So when Colvin got hot early, it made us all feel nervous. But we made some adjustments and made sure we found her whenever she caught it.”The Comets’ 2-3 zone was effective and gave the Kings a taste of their own medicine.“It’s something that we haven’t seen on film,” Amor said. “They’ve been man-to-man 90% of their possessions. They’ve run a little bit of a 3-2. So they obviously saw something, probably our shooting, that got them into that 2-3, and I thought it was a great game plan by Josh (Douglass).”The Comets graduated most of their players that were part of the semistate team two years ago when Madi Douglass was a freshman starter. But they look like a strong sectional contender again this year.“I’m glad they’re still a year younger because next year they’re gonna be the favorite in this tournament for sure,” Amor said.Coach Douglass lamented the fact that his Comets fell short on their upset bid.“They got us late because they were able to execute and we weren’t able to execute as well as what we’d like to. We had too many turnovers in the last seconds there,” he said. “We had a big offensive rebound by Steininger there that gave us life and we just weren’t able to capitalize on those things.”The Comets shot an efficient 16 of 31 from the field but were only 4 of 15 (27%) from long range as a team. They also committed 21 turnovers to the Kings’ 10.But they were going up against a veteran team that has won back-to-back sectional championships in Class 2A. The Kings are led by their six seniors and had only three underclassmen play in the game.“That’s what it is,” coach Douglass said. “They’ve been through it. Most of them started for four years or been in and out of the starting lineup. It’s just a senior-laden team. Kyle’s a great coach, does a great job with them, and they’re playing really well.“There was a few more things I wish we would’ve capitalized at different times, but again, we’re still — I don’t want to use the word young — but we’ve got one senior out there and the rest are sophomores and juniors. And we’re getting better at it. So just staying positive and keep attacking and keep working on those things in practice.”The Comets countered the Kings’ solid 2-3 zone defense with one of their own.“It would’ve been more effective if we wouldn’t have turned our back to Aftin there,” coach Douglass said. “That’s just not paying attention to what we talked about. But we wanted to come out, we’ve been in a lot of man all year and we wanted to go zone just to kind of throw something different at them. One, they’ve got a lot of foot speed and I was worried about that, so we played a lot more zone tonight.“We played a lot of zone last year, so I know we know how to do it. But as we’re getting older we’re trying to mix things up and do some different things.”The guard duo of Douglass and Colvin nearly led the Comets to victory.“Grace has been shooting the ball extremely well with a lot of confidence for us. Madi’s gonna go do her thing out there,” coach Douglass said. “She rebounds exceptionally well. She’s seeing the court exceptionally well. She’s not afraid to give it up to her teammates and get everybody involved.“They’re both great players. Unfortunately tonight, that’s a preview of what the championship game should look like. Two teams really battling out and counter punches, back and forth out there. Two teams just left it all out there.”Caston will play in Saturday night’s 6:30 p.m. consolation game. Cass, which won its first county title since 2015 a year ago, will play in the championship game at approximately 8:15.