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CHAPEL HILL — With 2 minutes left in its season, Bishop McGuinness trusted its four-year state title reign to five sophomores.

"Some of them were breathing pretty hard over there, and their eyes were big," head coach Brian Robinson said. "I'm sitting there thinking, 'Man, this is our JV team getting ready to go out there.' "

Refusing to quit when their two best players got hurt, the young Villains played with the poise of their predecessors, holding off undefeated, top-ranked Williamston 55-46 at the Dean Smith Center on Saturday for their fifth straight 1-A state title, a run matched only by Hayesville's six in a row from 1988-93.

The Villains never trailed, but they certainly sweated.

Their Division I-bound star, Megan Buckland, had 13 points by halftime as Bishop cruised ahead 26-14. But she collided with a Williamston defender while driving for a layup late in the third quarter and heard a pop in her left knee as she fell to the ground.

Buckland laid on the floor in tears for several minutes, an unusual display of emotion that tipped Robinson off her day was over. Buckland limped to the locker room and returned to the bench early in the fourth, still red-eyed. She said the Villains' trainer told her it's more likely a hamstring injury than a more serious one to her ACL.

"It was definitely tough (watching)," said Buckland, who was still voted MVP for a second straight year. "But I knew I had confidence in my team, even if I wasn't on the court, that we could still win. I had no doubt."

The biggest concern Buckland left behind was the task of guarding Katie Paschal, the second-leading scorer in state history. Buckland had done so more than admirably, using her long arms and four-inch height advantage to frustrate Paschal into six turnovers and 1-of-5 shooting in the first quarter.

Erin Liebal, a sophomore whose 2.8 points per game were 30 less than Paschal's season average, found herself guarding a 3,000-point scorer in the biggest game of the year.

Paschal finished with 18 points but shot 6-of-18 and had eight turnovers.

"(Liebal) didn't blink an eye," Robinson said. "She wanted the assignment when Megan went down, and she was up for the challenge."

Williamston (29-1) had 17 turnovers and 18 shots at the half as Bishop played an engulfing halfcourt trap.

"They played a great full game, and we played a great second half," Williamston head coach Hughes Barber said. "We just didn't settle down early enough."

Even so, Williamston cut a 10-point deficit to two in the first 3 minutes of the final quarter, sucking every ounce of momentum from the noisy arena as the Lady Villains looked to their coach for some clue what to do. Robinson told them to control their emotions, that "you've prepared for this moment, and now that the moment's here, you don't want to look back on this and say you didn't give your best effort."

Bishop (22-7) kept its lead by getting to the free throw line 27 times, but the Villains' second-leading scorer and lone remaining upperclassman, senior forward Erin Fitzgerald, went down in tears with her own knee injury at the 2:21 mark. She already had a brace on her other knee from an old volleyball injury, so she limped to the bench, transferred it to her newly injured knee and checked back in 33 seconds later. A typo in the media guide listed Fitzgerald as 56 feet tall, a stature that seemed correct as she grabbed two free throws and hit a free throw to close the game out.

Sophomore Sammi Goldsmith, the only other returning player to score in last year's title game, had 14 points — seven as the primary ballhandler after Buckland went out — and was named Bishop's Most Outstanding Player.

It ended the way it began — Buckland and Fitzgerald were injured at the start of the season, a tumultuous growing period during which most people thought Bishop's reign would soon be over. Robinson said he was thinking about that at the final buzzer Saturday when, for the first time in his five title game wins, he started to tear up.

"Words can't express how proud I am of not just the sophomores for stepping up and playing in a pressure-packed situation, but the team as a whole for sticking together all through the year through countless adverse moments," Robinson said. "I couldn't be happier right now. I really couldn't."

Contact Tom Keller at 373-7034 or tom.keller@news-record.com

Williamston 4 10 17 15 — 46
Bishop McGuinness 15 11 14 15 — 55

Williamston (29-1) — Katie Paschal 18, Zakkeya Morris 13, Cassie Harrell 6, Shakera Norfleet 5, Queenie Little 4.

Bishop McGuinness (22-7) — Megan Buckland 15, Sammi Goldsmith 14, Erin Fitzgerald 11, Sarah Coon 6, Marie Petrangeli 5, Erin Liebal 4.