The Andalusia Lady Bulldogs sealed their area title Tuesday night against Hillcrest-Evergreen, leading the way to host the area tournament with a 63-44 victory.

The Lady Bulldogs (17-2, 5-0 in Class 4A, Area 3) went up 38 points compared to Hillcrest’s 14 in the first half.

“We wanted to come out tonight and set the pace early defensively,” Andalusia coach Bennie Shellhouse said. “I didn’t think we played them really well when we went over there, but we jumped on them pretty good.

“There was an opportunity where we let some of the girls on the bench play a lot,” he said. “I was really pleased with our intensity on defense and I think we got a lot of steals and pushed the ball well.”

In the third quarter, the Lady Bulldogs shot up to a 53-28 lead and kept that lead going into the fourth to win the game by 19 points.

Leading scorers for Andalusia were Chantavia Lawrence with 16 points, Alexis Horton with 15 and Amber Anderson with 12.

Shellhouse said his team has done very well under the net defensively, which he thinks has served his team well so far this season.

“It’s like a new game every week,” he said. “Now we’re sitting in the driver’s seat. We take it one game at a time and at the beginning of the season I wouldn’t have believed you if you told me we’d be where we are right now.

“We’re really playing well as a group. The biggest change is probably the attitude toward each other,” he said. “We’ve been rebounding the ball real well the past few games. Tonight it got away from us a little bit. But, we’ve been defending the blocks real well and really been cutting off penetration real well. As long as we do those things, people will have to shoot outside on us. I feel pretty good about what we’re doing right now.”