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Madison's Adrianne Lehman brings the ball up court around Columbus Africentric's Chelsea Chambers during the third quarter of the Division III regional semifinals game at Springfield High School in Springfield Wed. March 10, 2010.

Staff photo by Pat Auckerman Madison's Adrianne Lehman brings the ball up court around Columbus Africentric's Chelsea Chambers during the third quarter of the Division III regional semifinals game at Springfield High School in Springfield Wed. March 10, 2010.

By Skip Weaver, Staff Writer Updated 8:03 AM Thursday, March 11, 2010

SPRINGFIELD — Excitement, joy and relief.

Those emotions and more overcame the Madison High School girls basketball team and their fans as they celebrated a narrow 56-53 win over Columbus Africentric on Wednesday, March 10 in the Division III regional semifinals at Springfield High School.

Africentric had the ball out of bounds on their end of the floor with a couple of seconds remaining in the game. The Nubians (19-6) got the ball in bounds and worked it around to scoring leader Raven Ferguson, who took an off-balance 3-point shot with one tick to go. The shot missed and Madison sophomore Brittany Shields came down with the rebound setting off an explosion of cheers from across the gym floor.

“All I had on my mind was to get that ball,” Shields said. “I saw her take the shot and felt it was going to miss because she was just sort of throwing it up, so I just held my box and ran after it.

“I was getting nervous because they were getting closer,” she continued. “But I just had to hold onto the ball. This feels awesome.”

With the win, Madison remains perfect on the season at 25-0. They will return to Springfield for a 1:30 p.m. tip-off on Saturday against Versailles, a 41-40 winner over Anna, in the regional championship.

“(Ferguson) got a better look than we would have liked for her to have,” Madison coach John Rossi Jr. said. “Should we have fouled her right away to put her at the line? You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

“We thought about that, but what if she misses and they get the rebound?” he continued. “It’s over with. I don’t want to look back. We survived and now we move on.”

Africentric applied plenty of defensive pressure to the Mohawks, which resulted in 21 turnovers unofficially. But while they were making the shots in the first half, they weren’t as successful in the second half.

Ferguson, who led all players with 23 points, was 9-of-31 shooting for the game. She was only 4-of-15 in the final two frames.

But she still had a chance to send the game to overtime.

“She didn’t knock it down,” said Michael Bates, Africentric’s boys basketball coach who was filling in for girls coach Will McKinney because of a sudden illness. “She’ll tell you she felt like she should have made that shot, but you’ve got to credit Madison. They didn’t make it easy on us at all.

“We actually got the ball to No. 12 (Chelsea Chambers) first and she had a cleaner look,” he continued. “But she gave the ball to Raven instead.”

Senior Lindsay Hoskins led the Mohawks with 20 points. Junior Ally Malott, who fouled out of the game for the first time this year, totaled 18.

Brittani Thomas added 11 for the Nubians.

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