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NORMAL – A wonderful postseason run for the Civic Memorial girls basketball team came to an end Friday morning (March 4) and left one more game tonight for third place. The Eagles were defeated by the Carmel Catholic High School Corsairs by a score of 51-24 in the class 3A State Semifinals. CM picks up just their fifth loss of the season.
“Obviously defensively our whole focus was trying to contain 6’ 5”, 6’ 4” and 6’ 1” CM head coach Mike Arbuthnot said after the loss regarding Carmel’s height advantage.
“We’ve never really seen anyone this tall before,” junior forward Olivia Durbin said.
This was a game dominated by the Corsairs because of that height advantage. They have four girls 6-foot and up and it was a little too much for the Eagles to handle. CM was outscored 40-6 in the paint.
The Eagles had only five less rebounds than the Corsairs. Carmel picked up 29 boards, 20 of them being defensive. This prevented CM on going on any sort of run.
Arbuthnot was happy about his team’s defensive performance though. He mentioned usually giving up too many offensive rebounds and his team held the Corsairs to nine, which he thought was great. He mentioned that his kids defensively did a “fabulous job.”
The Eagles did gain the lead first when Junior guard Aubree Wallace opened the game with a three-pointer. She finished with a team high eight points.
Having a quiet game was Durbin. She usually loves to shoot the three, and she shoots them well, but not this game. She shot 1-7 from beyond the arc and the Eagles shot 4-26 from threes overall. She finished with seven points.
Coming into this game Durbin had scored 115 points in just five postseason games, leading her team in scoring in all those games.
Senior guard Kelbie Zupan was kept off the score sheet completely. She’s been on fire this postseason as well but was prevented from scoring a single basket by the Corsairs’ great defense.
“My game is drive to the basket and go in strong and it’s hard when you’re going against tall girls like this team. It affected my game a little bit,” Zupan said after the game.
Give the Corsairs there due, they came ready to play. Senior center Grace Sullivan dropped 18 points and pulled down nine boards, leading her team in both categories. Junior guard Jordan Wood also scored in the double digits with 10.
CM was trailing pretty much the entire contest. The score was 11-8 after the first quarter and 24-12 at halftime. The Eagles only scored two points in the third quarter and went down 38-14.
“We were just trying to play catch up as much as we could after the first quarter,” Arbuthnot said.
The Eagles did make a push in the fourth quarter with the help of sophomore guard Avari Combes, but it was too little too late for CM. They couldn’t overcome the deficit and miss out on the State Championship game tomorrow night (March 5).
“I know we shot around 22-23 percent from the field, and when you do that against a quality ball club like Carmel it’s going to catch up with you,” Arbuthnot added.
The Eagles’ season is not over yet, however. They still get to play in the third-place game tonight (March 4) at 7 p.m.
They’ll take on the Morton High School Potters. They are 28-6 and lost their State Semifinal game by a score of 55-24 to the Nazareth Academy Roadrunners.
Friday night will be the final game pf their high school careers for four CM Seniors: Kelbie Zupan, Madelyn Brueckner, Emily Williams and Claire Christeson.
Regardless of what happens next, the Eagles can hold their heads high because it’s still the first time in school history they’ve made it all the way to state and they made it really fun to watch.
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