ROXANA - In a Saturday IHSA Class 2A Girls Regional play-in game at Roxana, Roxana held off Marquette 39-33 to advance to the second semifinal.
Kinsley Mouser led the Shells with 12 points, while Laynie Gehrs added 10 points, Kylee Slayden scored nine points, and Daisy Daugherty had eight points.
Get The Latest News!
Don't miss our top stories and need-to-know news everyday in your inbox.
Kel'c Robinson led Marquette with 12 points, Laila Davis had seven points, Allie Weiner had six points, Addison Pranger, and Izzy Hough had two points.
Marquette had a 15-13 lead at the half and 27-23 lead at the end of three, but Roxana came back with 16 points in the fourth for the win.
Roxana is now 17-13 and moves on to the semifinal game on Tuesday against third-seed Carlinville in a 7 p.m. tip-off. The Explorers end their season at 9-17.
"Marquette came out ready to play," Roxana head coach Addaya Moore said. "They have an extremely young team but they have some girls who are very talented off the dribble. Coach Sykes is also an amazing coach, she was my head coach when I was in high school, so we knew yesterday was not going to be easy. We started off slow offensively. And struggled for three quarters."
"With that being said, regardless of score and time, our girls played a full game," Moore continued. "We don't go hard for three quarters and stop at defeat. We adjust and keep playing hard. We eventually figured out Marquette was playing a triangle and two going into the second half. That's something we haven't seen all year. We called a time out, adjusted and found a gap to expose the triangle and two."
Marquette Coach Whitney Sykes said obviously the game didn’t end the way the Explorers wanted, but she thought her girls gave a great effort.
"We were just a couple of shots away from winning that game," she said. "That has been an issue for us all year is consistently scoring in every quarter. We seem to have about 8 minutes where we just can’t put the ball in the basket. For the most part, we got the shots we wanted and didn’t turn it over, but they didn’t fall."
More like this:
