HIGHLAND - Jonathan Denney shook his head.
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The Civic Memorial Lady Eagles basketball coach was disheartened that his 20-1 team was out-muscled when usually they’re the ones who do that to opponents, but not last night.
The Eagles, who are ranked No. 3 Class 3A were upset by the Breese Central Lady Cougars 39-36 in the semifinals of the Highland Tournament on Wednesday night. Breese Central goes to 18-2 and will play in the finals against either Highland or O’Fallon on Saturday. Civic Memorial will play the loser in the third-place game.
“In this game, we got out-toughed from the tip to the final horn,” Civic Memorial head coach Jonathan Denney said. “They won every loose ball and got I don’t know how many offensive rebounds. [Breese Central] set that tone early and our girls didn’t respond. I’m a little disappointed in our toughness. Coach Green and I were concerned about Breese Central and how hard they play.”
Carson Newkirk led the Cougars with 12 points. Olivia Wesselman followed with 11, and Faye Meissner added nine.
The leading scorer for Civic Memorial was sophomore Anna Hall who tallied 15 points with 13 coming in the second half. Alaira Tyus finished with six while Tori Standefer, Hannah Schmidt, and Kourtland Tyus all scored four points. Kaylee Eaton, who averaged 16.5 points coming into the contest and one of the leading scorers in the Riverbender area was held to three points.
After falling behind 24-16 at halftime due to a late Olivia Wesselmann three-pointer, the Eagles rallied back. They cut the deficit to 35-29 thanks to eight third-quarter points from Hall. In the fourth quarter, the Eagles limited the Cougars to one made field goal, but could never tie or take the lead despite all of their good chances.
“We had a layup that would’ve tied it, and Anna had a nice look from the left side on a transition basket that would’ve given us the lead. Kaylee had a wide-open three with under two minutes to go,” Denney said. “You’d like for one of those shots to go in; they didn’t. We fought until the end, but ultimately they made more plays than we did and they deserve to win.”
Civic Memorial got within one at 37-36 with under a minute to play and eventually sent Newkirk to the line with 15 seconds to play, and she made both shots. On the following inbounds pass, it was stolen away by the Cougars, and eventually, Meissner was fouled with eight seconds to play. She missed the front end of a one-and-one, but the outlet pass by the Eagles was thrown out of bounds with four seconds left.
“Those kids come to play. They were very hungry. Coach Reuter does a great job at Breese Central, and they’re an established program,” Denney said. “Did that make us better tonight? It’s tough to take this loss because we felt coming in we had a nice chance to win, and they came to win too. They just played their game a little bit better than we played our game.”
