CARY - It only made sense that Cary and Panther Creek's first-round girls basketball match-up in the would come down to the wire Tuesday at Cary's Charlie Adams Gymnasium. The two teams were not only seeded fourth and fifth, respectively, in the Tri-Nine Conference standings, and had played on the same court just four days earlier to end the regular season — a game that Cary won in overtime.

But the Lady Catamounts avenged that earlier loss with a 47-46 victory and will play Green Hope in Wednesday's semifinals. Junior Kayla Seymour had 17 points and four assists for Panther Creek in what was the program's first conference tournament victory.

Seymour led her team in points, but the emphasis on the defensive end by Claire Wach spearheaded a fourth-quarter surge by coach Geoff Bowman's team.

The diminutive Wach had a game-high eight steals and held Cary freshman point guard Mallory Curtis to just two points and one assist.

"It was a hard game on Friday so I wanted to come back at them," Wach said. "I had a lot of anger from the last game, so I gave it all I had and got my teammates hyped up."

Towering freshman Azura Stevens had 13 points, seven rebounds and four blocks for the Lady Imps. Sophomore wing Whitney Coleman poured in 17 points and 10 rebounds.

Cary used its superior size to dominate the rebounding totals 32-19.

But much like the case of the 5-foot-1 Wach, size didn't matter for Panther Creek.

Panther Creek will be playing Green Hope Wednesday at about 6:45 p.m., the third game of a quadruple-header at Athens Drive High School. The game will have an online radio broadcast on www.ihigh.com/trinine as well as Twitter updates on www.twitter.com/prepsnow.

"We're excited. We've had a chance to play them twice already and it didn't go our way," Wach said. "Now we're ready to get out on them."