Sunrise Girls: Liberty focuses on future after routing Foothill

Liberty girls basketball team wasn’t driven by revenge on Saturday.

Instead, its 68-38 victory over Foothill in the Class 4A Sunrise Region championship game at Canyon Springs had the Patriots looking forward, not back.

“We left the past in the past,” said Liberty senior forward Dre’una Edwards, who scored a game-high 20 points. “This is the future now. We’re ready to play.”

The Patriots dropped a 55-52 decision to Foothill in the region final last year, but 2018 has been a different story between these teams.

Former Falcons star Rae Burrell transferred to Liberty, which won all four meetings against its rival this season.

“This was our fourth time playing them this year,” Liberty coach Chad Kapanui said. “It’s tough to beat a team more than once. It’s hard to get them motivated for it.”

That was apparent early on.

Though Liberty led 14-11 after one quarter, a 3-pointer from Falcons guard Kaylee Hall with 7 minutes, 22 seconds left in the second quarter produced the second of the game’s five ties.

But Patriots forward Journie Augmon kicked off a 16-2 run with an offensive rebound and put-back with 3:48 left in the second quarter, and Liberty scored the first four points of the third quarter to ignite the rout.

“Obviously, in the second half we just took over,” Kapanui said.

Liberty (30-2) employed various pressure defenses to force the Falcons (18-10) into 28 turnovers. That effort and the Patriots’ work on the offensive boards led to a huge discrepancy in shots.

Liberty had 76 field-goal attempts compared to 42 for Foothill.

Augmon, London Pavlica and Burrell each added 12 points for Liberty.

Jailyn Johnson scored 11 to pace Foothill.