Update: On Feb. 6, the Pike High School girls’ basketball team beat Avon High School 55-38. They’ll play Feb. 14 against Lawrence Central High School at Greencastle High School during regionals. Get tickets here.
If you get a glimpse of a Pike High School girls varsity basketball game, you’ll see a team with all the ingredients to win a state championship.
A starting-five lineup of players who can each score double digits on any given night, a bench full of standout underclassmen and the defensive DNA to force a team to tap out at halftime.
The Red Devils are on a 21-game win streak and beat out conference rival Lawrence Central High School to become Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference champions.
Oya Woodruff, the school’s varsity basketball announcer and a culinary instructor at Pike, has had a front row seat to the action all season long. She has been vocal on Facebook about getting more people to support the team.
“Not only are they good students and kids, they are really good basketball players. They have incredible fundamentals, and they’re unselfish in their play,” she said. “If you love basketball, you’ll love watching the Pike girls play.”
With the IHSAA Girls Basketball State Tournament ahead, Pike is hoping to make history and will face Avon High School on Feb. 6 in its first playoff game.
The girls basketball program has never won a state championship. The team’s last appearance was in 2017.
A near-perfect regular season
On Jan. 30, Pike squared off against Lawrence North High School. At Lawrence North, it was not hard to tell who was rooting for the home team. Many showed their Wildcats pride, from the music of the student band to the roars of parents packed in the home sections.
Pike didn’t have much student support, but families showed up on a 21-degree Friday night. Cheryl Wilson, junior point guard Saniya Smith’s grandmother, was decked out in Pike fan gear including a red and white hat, earrings and pompoms.
The first quarter of the away game was a little rough for the Red Devils with turnovers and miscues on defense. Senior power forward Marley Jeffers and Smith accounted for nine of the team’s 15 points.
However, Pike started to pull away in the second quarter.
For a team on a win streak, the girls played like they needed to prove a point. Players dove for loose balls, intercepted passes for steals and double-teamed to wear down their opponent.
This smothering defensive strategy is what led them to cruise to a 33-point victory against the 2025 Class 4A state title winners.
In Pike’s 80-47 win, senior center Komari Booker led the team with 13 points. Jeffers and Smith each finished with 12 points.
When the buzzer sounded, the high school girls were crowned conference champs, heading into the postseason.
“I think it just shows how much work we put in over summer and just how our work ethic took us here,” Jeffers said.
It’s the first conference title in Keith Hollins’ four-year tenure as head coach.
“It’s good for the school and community. The girls have been working since August … grinding together doing all of the little things and being a sisterhood and a family,” Hollins said.
However, Hollins is nonchalant about the team’s 22-1 record — that’s in the rearview. He’s focused on the playoffs now, taking each tournament game one at a time.
Pike beat Avon 75-38 in its first game of the season, but Hollins said Avon is a better team now.
“When it comes to the playoffs everyone is 0-0; it’s a new season,” he said. “(Avon) is going to play hard and come after us.”
Hoping to make history
For six consecutive seasons, Pike had a negative win-loss record. That was until, the Red Devils, then underdogs, made a deep playoff run last season that ended with a heartbreaking 45-44 loss to Lawrence North at semi-state.
“We all felt that last year. We were one point away from making it to state. Nobody wants to feel that again,” Alonna Divine, a senior shooting guard, said.
She said it made her and her teammates, including the incoming freshman, hungry to come back this season.
Senior guard Deniyah Warren, crowned Pike’s vocal leader, said chemistry and practice have carried them to the 21-game win streak.
Talking over each other, the four senior captains couldn’t decide if practice will be tough going forward. But they said running will be used as both a method of conditioning and punishment to correct the little mistakes on defense and offense.
Like typical historically great teams, Pike is the top seed in the Class 4A rankings. But, the team is also up against two things, treading a 21-game win streak and winning a state championship.
“It’s no pressure, we just have to keep doing what we’re doing. Keep getting better, coming in every day, practicing hard and we gone be okay,” Warren said. “With it being our last year, we have to do it. We don’t get another chance at this.”
Pike’s only loss of the season happened against Homestead High School in Fort Wayne. The Red Devils lost by 14 points in the second game of the season.
“After that loss …we were able to put the pieces together and learn how to use each other,” Smith said.
The players said they feel confident about their championship quest.
“We all have to be all in. I feel like we’re going to win state. I believe in my team; we’ve worked really hard so we got this,” Booker said.
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