The Charlotte Crown lost five of their first six games this year. On Saturday night, ten points down in the fourth quarter and playing in the building of the only team that finished ahead of them, they won a championship.
Charlotte beat the Jacksonville Waves 81-76 to take the inaugural title in the four-team women's professional basketball league, which is playing its first season. The Crown trailed for most of the night. Then they outscored Jacksonville 32-19 over the closing quarter, took the lead in the final minutes, and did not give it back.
A thirteen-point swing in the last ten minutes.
Deja Kelly scored a game-best 29 points and was named Championship MVP. Kelly, 24, a North Carolina and Oregon product, led the UPSHOT League in both points per game and assists per game this season. KK Deans and AD Durr hit three 3-pointers apiece, and LeLe Grissett grabbed a team-high seven rebounds. The Crown credited Deans's shooting down the stretch and their defense for the turn.
Charlotte opened the season 1-5. Six games in, the team added Schaquilla Nunn, a 32-year-old center out of Winthrop and Tennessee, and went 22-6 the rest of the way to finish 23-11. The league drew the same line on Saturday when it named Nunn its Defensive Player of the Year.
Nunn led the UPSHOT League in rebounds per game and in blocks per game. She ranked tenth in steals per game and eleventh in scoring, and both of those marks led all centers in the league. She finished second on the Crown in minutes played per game. The league put her and Kelly on the All-UPSHOT Team the same day.
Jacksonville won the regular season at 25-9, two games clear of Trisha Stafford-Odom's Crown. The two clubs spent the year trading results. Charlotte won the season opener in Jacksonville in May, then beat the Waves 105-73 at Bojangles Coliseum in early August, a league record for points in a regulation game. Jacksonville answered with a 78-76 win in Charlotte on a buzzer-beater that ended a ten-game Crown winning streak. Charlotte took the next meeting 99-94 in overtime.
The Crown clinched their place in the title game weeks ago. The format left no margin: one game, winner take all, no series.
This is the league's first champion. Earlier this month the Indiana Fever signed Charlotte's Michelle Onyiah out of it.
The Crown will hold a championship celebration on Monday, August 31, in the East Charlotte Room at the Bojangles Entertainment Complex. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., the team introduction begins at 7, and players and coaches are scheduled to appear. Admission is free and open to the public. The Crown play their home games at Bojangles Coliseum.
The banner goes to a team that lost five of its first six games, and six more across the entire rest of the season.