Going into Thursday night’s regular season finale at home against first-place and No. 9-state ranked Forest Park (20-4 overall, 14-1 region), the Griffin High girl’s basketball team (7-11, 5-10) finds itself fighting to stay sixth in Region 4-AAAA after a 50-45 loss Tuesday at fourth-place North Clayton.

If Griffin wins it’ll finish sixth. If it loses it’s seventh, behind Stockbridge (8-16, 5-11) which has the head-to-head tiebreaker against GHS.

Going into Tuesday’s game, Griffin still could have finished fourth in the region if it ran the table, got help elsewhere and won a three-way playoff. Griffin kept it close, trailing North Clayton 19-9 at the end of the first quarter, 31-24 at the half and 41-33 heading into the fourth where they outscored the Lady Eagles 12-9.

“We just couldn’t finish at the end,” said GHS assistant coach Mike Willis.

It’s a common theme this season for a young Lady Bears squad, which lost to North Clayton 42-39 on Jan. 12 at The House. This time Jahmiya Clemons scored 15 points, Shantavia McCune 9 and Otisha Perkins 8 to lead GHS.

As far as Thursday’s game goes, the Lady Bears fell at Forest Park 62-55 in overtime Friday. However, Forest Park will be looking for revenge after a three-point loss to Dutchtown Tuesday.