Tigers Throw Scare into State-Ranked CFX Before Falling

Worth County's girls threw a scare into state-ranked CFX before falling to them 58-18 Monday in district action. The loss ended their season with only two wins on their ledger, both of them near the end of the year. But Coach April Healy said that she was upbeat about the team despite her team's disappointing record and the one-sided score. "They played hard for me the whole season," she said. "A lot of teams could have gotten down on themselves in that sort of situation, but these girls did not. I was spoiled, because they were really easy to coach." Healy said that the time for them to improve would be in the offseason; she said that she would set up a basketball camp so that they could learn more about the game and that she would try to bring in an automatic rebounder so that players could come in and shoot during the summer months. "I'll be asking a lot from them during the offseason, because we will have some big shoes to fill," she said.

Playing their last games as Tigers were Jessica Borey and Haley Green. "We asked Jessica to do everything for us," said Healy. "She played entire games, guarded the other team's best shooter, and brought the ball up the floor for us. She improved so much during the year. Haley Green was physical, rebounded well, and always posted up hard. We ran more sets than anyone this year, and teams had to go to zone against us. I was proud of the fact that everyone on the team learned them and could run them on the floor at any time."

CFX jumped out to a 5-2 lead three minutes into the game. But Worth County successfully slowed them down for a long time with a box and one on Whitney Harrington. Jessica Borey took a charge on her, which seemed to take away a lot of their aggression early on. The Tigers broke CFX's full court press and were able to take big chunks of time off the clock, allowing them to slow the game down against the fast-paced Bulldog squad. After Brooke Adams hit a shot from the high post, cutting it to 5-4 at the 4:16 mark, the score was stuck there as Harrington and Geib were bottled up and nobody else could pick up the slack for CFX. Finally, in an effort to change the tempo of the game, CFX went to man to man, but Jessica Borey burned it as she drove down the right side and fed Haley Green for a layup with 1:40 that put them up 6-5.

Harrington finally got going with an NBA 3-pointer with 1:10 left; Haley Green's free throw with 58 seconds left was answered with a putback by Gieb at the buzzer that made it 10-7. For the first two minutes of the second quarter, the game turned into a defensive slugfest, with neither side able to get anything going. Finally, Harrington scored off a backdoor cut with 5:42 left and followed it up with a 3-pointer from the top of the key off a steal, and things began to fall apart for Worth County. The Tigers slipped back into their old habit of settling for rushed shots and forcing passes that were not there after breaking the press. Haley Green picked up her third foul and had to sit on the bench, and Amanda Yocum was all alone for a fast break layup after a breakdown on transition defense. Jessica Borey's free throw with 3:27 left off a drive cut it to 18-8, but then Chelsea Miller scored two free throws and Rebecca Geib scored off a steal.

The game was still remotely competitive at 22-8, but then a phantom foul call on Jessica Borey, who had a clean block on a Whitney Harrington shot, seemed to take the fight out of the Tigers. The call was so bad that even the CFX fans thought that the official made a bad call against the Tigers. Harrington made one out of two free throws on the play and then following a turnover, converted a four-point play when she knocked down a 3-pointer from 30 feet out to make it 27-8.

Worth County kept up with CFX during the first three minutes of the third quarter. They countered a couple of buckets by Geib and one by Harrington with a shot from the right wing from Ashley Reynolds in transition and a baseline shot from Brooke Adams. That kept the deficit at 33-12. But CFX was pounding the ball inside to Geib and Green drew her fourth foul, which opened the floodgates for another run. They finished off the Tigers with a 14-0 run in a three-minute span than left them up 47-12 before Jessica Borey broke the run with a drive and shot from the high post. The Bulldogs continued to play the game at their speed, getting another rash of transition buckets and layups; Worth County went scoreless for another eight minutes before Borey scored off a steal and drive with 2:20 left in regulation and Delaney Davidson scored an inside shot with 27 seconds left to round out the scoring.