FORT WAYNE – When the time came, she had to turn her back on it. South Side girls basketball coach Juanita Goodwell couldn’t watch, with this fierce battle for first place in the SAC down to 2.3 seconds and – gulp – a one-and-bonus free throw coming. She could only turn around and look to the scoreboard.

If the Home score changed, she’d know Lakyn Gulley had accomplished that most difficult of tasks for the Archers: knocking down a free throw. And if it didn’t …

“No, I didn’t want to watch it,” said Goodwell with a laugh, after Gulley hit the front end to lift South past Snider 61-60 Friday night. “Free throws have been our Achilles’ heel all season long so far, and it was just one of those things. We’ve been getting better; it’s just all that pressure – the game’s on the line, it’s a big game, you know.

“So I couldn’t watch. I’ll let her handle all the pressure. I’ll just go ahead and turn around.”

It was pretty much the dominant theme for a game that made you want hide your eyes at times, it was so relentlessly, if un-prettily, played. Snider killed itself with 19-of-55 shooting and a staggering 33 turnovers, 10 of which came in the fourth quarter.

South countered with 27 turnovers of its own. The teams missed 31 free throws between them on a night when easy baskets were spurned, bodies went sprawling, whistles blew and South (15-1, 4-0) remained unbeaten in the SAC.

“This was more of a team effort,” said South Side forward Brittni Clopton, one of three Archers in double figures with 10 points. “We had to stay together close for this. There was so much going on we had to stick together and pull it out as a family.”

They did by riding a game-high 25 points from Ariana Simmons, who got to the rim time and again for putbacks and layups as Snider (11-3, 3-1) failed all night to block her off the glass. Jumani Thomas added 11, five of them in the fourth quarter. And Gulley got the biggest point of all, dropping the front end of that one-and-bonus after Kari Barnes, who led the Panthers with 19 points, tied it on a short jumper with nine seconds left.

That completed a late Snider rally that erased a 57-50 South lead in the last 2:53.

Not that anyone expected anything less from a game that featured 14 lead changes before Thomas gave South Side the lead for good with a steal, layup and free throw with 5:10 to play, part of a 10-3 South run to open the fourth.

“That first game didn’t mean anything,” said Goodwell, whose team beat the Panthers by 13 in the SAC tournament. “It was the holiday tournament, everybody’s coming off this or that. … We knew Snider was going to come out aggressively. That’s just the kind of team that they are.

“So I had to remind them keep your head in it, you’ve got to keep fighting. We had to remind them, you did it before, you can do it, just believe. Keep fighting, keep playing.”

bensmith@jg.net