Loud Derby fans filled half of Koch Arena on Saturday, hugging the Panthers girls basketball team as tears sprouted from their eyes.

The Panthers finally got it done and won their first Class 6A basketball title.

Derby defeated previously unbeaten Olathe East 50-35 in the 6A championship.

But everyone knew for sure that the Panthers were finally going to bring the first state championship back to Derby with a minute left in the game.

Sophomore Sydney Nilles even started crying on the bench before the final buzzer.

“It’s like every person’s dream,” senior Holly Mills said. “Because only two teams get to end their season on a win and be the first place winner, and (it’s) your last game — it’s perfect.”

Olathe East was the only unbeaten team in both the girls and boys bracket but that didn’t scare the Panthers.

“I think we were pretty confident,” Mills said. “We had nothing to lose. They were the one with all the pressure. They were unbeaten, they were the No. 1 seed,” Mills said.

Junior Tor’e Alford laughed when asked if she would rather win a tense game — like the 42-40 win over Wichita South in the semifinals — or win in dominating fashion.

“I don’t know, that’s a good question, because if it was a tense game and we won a buzzer beater, it probably would have hit me faster like ‘oh we won!’ But since we won by 15, it’s like ‘oh we won’ but like ‘we won!’”

Going into halftime the Panthers were leading 28-18, a luxury they didn’t have in the 2017 championship game when they made a furious comeback against eventual champion Manhattan.

“We did it last year,” Alford said. Manhattan was “beating us by 20, we came back with five minutes left. So we just kind of came into the locker room and told each other anything can happen because we did it personally.”

In the game’s final 19 minutes, the Panthers outscored the Eagles 33-13.

The Eagles stayed in the paint to score. They made 3 of 7 three pointers, while the Panthers were 9 of 18.

In the last two minutes of the fourth, Derby went to the free-throw line five times and was 9 of 14 overall.

Unlike the semifinal win, when junior Kennedy Brown led all scorers, she only had eight in the championship.

For the first time in the tournament, Derby didn’t rely mainly on Brown.

Instead, Alford stepped into the spotlight with 16 points, 15 of them on three-pointers.

“I just tried to shoot when I’m open and produce when we need it during the flow of the game,” Alford said.

Junior Aliyah Myers scored 10 points and Sydney Nilles had 12.