Following its best finish in eight years, three Orange women’s basketball players have been named All-Central Conference.
Senior forward Evelyn George, junior guard Maura McMurtry and senior center Marshea Byrd were named to the All-Conference team.
George was named All-Conference for the third consecutive year. For the second year in a row, George led the team in scoring, averaging 17.1 points per game. She was also the leading rebounder on the team with 8.4 per game. George surpassed 1,000 career points in the Lady Panthers win over Cedar Ridge on January 7. She became the first Orang women’s player with 1,000 points since Lauren Cates, who finished her career with 1,043 points in 2019. This season, George finished with 12 double-doubles. On November 25 against Southern Lee, George finished with 25 points, 13 rebounds and seven steals in a 58-46 Lady Panthers victory. George started the year by scoring 20 points and grabbing eleven rebounds in a win over Garner. While there has never been an official triple-double in Orange women’s basketball history, George nearly had one against Reidsville when she amassed 19 points, nine rebounds and eight steals.
George set her career-high of 26 points against Chapel Hill on December 10. Against conference opposition, her season-high was 25 points in a win against Williams on January 3. George, whose older sister Samantha graduated in 2023 and also played basketball at Orange, committed to Guilford College last month.
For the first time since 2017, Orange reached a conference tournament championship game after beating Cedar Ridge and Eastern Alamance in the Central Conference Tournament.
After finishing second in the Central Conference to eventual 3A State Champion Western Alamance, Orange defeated Swansboro 50-33 in the opening round of the 3A State Playoffs. It was the first time since 2017 that the Lady Panthers won a state playoff game.
For the second year in a row, McMurtry was named to the All-Conference team. McMurtry’s presence on offense was most noticeable when she was absent from the lineup during a stretch in late January. Without their most experienced point guard, the Lady Panthers went from a 58-41 win over Williams in Burlington to a 61-53 loss to the Bulldogs in Hillsborough. McMurtry returned to the lineup the following week and Orange closed the regular season with six consecutive wins.
McMurtry scored a career-high 21 points in a thrilling double overtime game against Southeast Alamance on December 27 in the Southeast Alamance Holiday Hoopla Tournament. The Stallions would pull out a 74-72 win over Orange. Southeast Alamance would go on to win the 2A State Championship in only it second year.
McMurtry scored 13 points in Orange’s senior night win over Eastern Alamance on February 14, another thrilling game where senior Shannon Murphy hit two free throws with one second remaining to pull out a 64-63 win.
Byrd was the starting center for the Lady Panthers on her third year on the varsity. She averaged 6.4 points per game. Against Southern Lee, Byrd had ten points and ten rebounds for her first double-double of the season. Against Western Alamance on January 24, Byrd finished with 13 points and 12 rebounds as the Warriors won 60-48. It was the closest game that any Central Conference team gave Western Alamance this season. In her final regular season home game, Byrd finished with seven points and six rebounds in the win over the Eagles.
Byrd also had eleven points in the victory over Williams in Burlington.
The Lady Panthers were led by first-year head coach Josh Underwood, an Orange graduate who guided the Panthers to an 18-10 season, the most wins in a season for Orange since the 2018-2019 season. Yet it was Walter Williams Jason Cheek who was named the Central Conference Coach of the Year.
Western Alamance’s Allie Sykes was named the Central Conference Player of the Year.