Lauren Avant, the 2010 basketball prodigy and Tennessee commit, had other things on her mind. The night before, she missed a game-winning three-pointer from the corner that she says she never misses. What's more, "I cursed myself all night."

Lauren Avant

So when the time came to set things straight, Avant did not hesitate in approaching Tennessee Flight coach Matt Insell during a timeout with less than two minutes to play. Insell had just called a play for another player. Avant asked him to switch the call to "Two" - a high screen and roll that would be run for . She got the idea from the Edwards family in the stands. They know a thing or two about the game since patriarch Blue Edwards played in the NBA.

"I heard it and thought about it," said Avant, who is close to completing her freshman year at Lausanne Collegiate School in Memphis. "I thought it was really smart."

So smart that Avant hit the screen at full tilt, turned the corner, got to the cup, took a bump yet scored to tie the game at 50 with 1:43 to play. Candace Wood, the North Carolina commit, sank a pair of foul shots with 32.9 seconds remaining to claim the 52-50 victory over Exodus, breaking the Nike losing streak here to adidas at four games.

The early mastery demonstrated by the adidas teams was the talk of the tournament on Sunday. Insell broke it down to his players before the game. His team had suffered one of the bigger upsets, losing to the Dayton Lady Hoopstars under a blizzard of three-pointers.

Alexa Roche

"I told the kids that we're not playing very well and we got beat," he said. "We let Nike down (on Saturday). We needed to get them off to the right start today."

Things surely didn't seem headed that way. Exodus, which recorded the first adidas victory over Nike, beating The Family on Saturday, created tempo with their fullcourt press and coaxed the Flight into an up-and-down game. While the Flight kept Exodus star guard Samantha Prahalis from blowing up, Exodus countered with big games from their inside players, most Shakeya Leary and Alexa Roche. Prahalis also chipped in a rather acrobatic 14 points as Exodus controlled the game until LaSondra Barett, No. 31 in 2008 by HoopGurlz, scored her 13th and 14th poins to tie the game at 46 with 3:38 to play.

That all set up Avant's fantastic finish - an opportunity not to make her mark on the sneaker wars, but to prove something to herself.

"I had to make up for last night," she said. "The Nike thing seemed important to the coaches, but not to me. I was thinking about that shot I missed. I'm used to making that shot."

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Glenn Nelson is the publisher of HoopGurlz.com. He also founded and coached the Dragons and Northwest HoopGurlz select girl's basketball teams. Glenn previously was the editor-in-chief at Scout.com and a longtime, national-award-winning basketball columnist and writer for The Seattle Times. His work also has appeared in several books and national magazines. He is co-author of "Rising Stars: The Ten Best Players in the NBA" (Rosen Publishing, 2002). For more on Glenn's World, click here. He can be reached at glenn@hoopgurlz.com.

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