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BETHALTO – Anytime Highland and Civic Memorial get together on the girls basketball court, there's always something at stake.
The Eagles and Bulldogs clashed Wednesday night at CM's gym, this time with control of the Mississippi Valley Conference race at stake, and the Eagles emerged from the showdown in the driver's seat thanks to an 18-point effort from CM sophomore Anna Hall as the Eagles scored a 48-41 win over the Bulldogs to go to 22-2 on the season, 6-0 in the MVC; the Bulldogs fell to 14-9 overall this year and two games behind the Eagles at 4-2 in the league with four games to go in the conference for both teams.
The win didn't come easily for CM, Eagle coach Jonathan Denney felt. “They've (Highland) got good players, they want to win as badly as anybody and look at their schedule,” Denney said. “They're 15-9, 14-9, but look at the nine teams they've lost to – us three times, Breese Central, O'Fallon, Belleville East, T-Town (Teutopolis) – they're all quality programs and they've been right there in all of them.
“It's probably frustrating for them, but at the same time, full credit to our girls making the plays when they needed to. I just felt like we were just a little bit off; maybe that comes from the inability to finish – it's just as frustrating in our own gym.”
“We came here tonight - we competed,” said Bulldog coach Mike Arbuthnot. “Offensively, our struggles are still happening; we're not knocking down the shots obviously, but the last time we played them, we only got 30 shots; I felt like we went to the rim enough, but we didn't get rewarded by going to the rim as much as they did.
“Our effort was there defensively – it has been; we're turning the page enough to where we're starting to defend teams well. Offensively, we've got to have some people step up; we're still battling the turnover issues.”
The game started out fairly evenly and was tight all night long; neither team could get to a particularly big lead. CM held just a 16-11 lead at quarter time and 23-17 at the half. Highland managed to work itself to a 26-25 lead about midway through the third period when Rece Portell connected from behind the three-point line, only to see the Eagles answer with Kaylee Eaton score to go back up at 27-26.
From that point on, the Eagles took control and got back-to-back three-balls from Alaria Tyus and Tori Standefer to get to a 33-26 lead late in the third; Highland managed to pull back to 38-36 in the final quarter thanks to Portell, but could never regain the lead on the Eagles thanks to some big shots from Alaria Tyus, Anna Hall and Eaton.
Hall led the Eagles with 18 points on the night with Alaria Tyus and Eaton adding 12 points each; Portell led the Bulldogs with 16 points with Ellie Brown adding 10.
Next up for CM is a 6 p.m. game at Columbia this evening before they host Waterloo in a 6 p.m. Monday league game. Their remaining schedule has them heading to Triad at 6 p.m. Feb. 1, at Mascoutah at 6 p.m. Feb. 5 and closing out at home against Jersey at 6 p.m. Feb. 8.
