Miami East’s Camryn Francis fires up a 3-pointer over West Liberty-Salem’s zone defense that gave the Vikings fits. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
The Vikings were forced to rely on 3-point shooting in a defensive battle and lost to West Liberty-Salem one step short of a district final.
Dayton, OH – Maryn Gross’ damp eyes opened a window into everything she felt: the pain of defeat, the final game of her high school basketball career and one even more important thing.
“The relationships meant more than anything,” she said.
Gross and her Miami East teammates expected to practice all next week to prepare for the district finals. Instead, West Liberty-Salem gets to do that, gets to make more memories and gets to play at least one more game.
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Gross and her teammates didn’t expect to feel sad. They entered Friday night’s sectional final at Northridge High School with a 23-0 record, ranked No. 1 in the state and the top seed. They envisioned the program’s deepest tournament run since the 1998 team lost in the state final to finish 27-1.
But the unthinkable happened against a team the Vikings defeated 35-24 on January 29. They couldn’t make enough shots or get enough easy shots and lost 37-30 in a slow-paced sectional final dominated by zone defenses.
“It’s a shame,” second-year head coach Kevin Evans said. “I got four great seniors, and they gave a lot to this program.”
Gross and Camryn Francis are four-year letter winners, and McKayah Musselman and Logan Phillips won three letters. Those four, junior Jacqueline Kadel and whoever Evans turned to on the bench had an up and down night looking for good shots on a team deep enough for Gross and Musselman to be the leading scorers at 9.0 points a game. Kadel and Phillips led the Vikings with eight points each.
Miami East’s Maryn Gross is one of four senior starters who played their final game for the Vikings.
The Vikings fell behind 6-2 but found some life to take a 15-10 lead when Kadel made a 3-pointer and the Vikings turned two turnovers into layups. But the game belonged to the Tigers (21-4) from that point on.
West Liberty coach Dennis McIntosh employed the same defensive zone strategy he used three weeks ago against the Vikings. This time he also emphasized a focus on two of East’s better shooters and to guard the high post area to prevent the taller Vikings from attacking inside.
Most of the game East passed the ball around the perimeter. They looked inside but seldom found an open passing lane. Sharply thrown skip passes were often the only way to get an open shot. They made five 3-pointers, but that’s not enough when the majority of your shots are from that range.
“We made them shoot a lot more shots from the outside than they probably normally would have,” McIntosh said.
East certainly wanted more shots at close range, but Evans knew without making more 3-pointers it would become increasingly difficult to get those shots.
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“When you’re playing against a zone, if you want to get the ball inside, you got to hit some shots, and that’ll spread teams out,” he said. “But we just weren’t able to hit the shots, and they didn’t really have to close us out that hard. That took away a lot of our inside looks that we were trying to get.”
After East’s best stretch put them up 15-10, the Tigers tied the score at halftime on Lilly Weaver’s 3-pointer. Then the Tigers scored the first five points of the third quarter for a 10-0 run and 20-15 lead.
Jacqueline Kadel made two of Miami East’s five 3-pointers and scored eight points.
Katie Paulus made a 3-pointer to cut the Tigers’ lead to 20-18. Later Phillips made a 3-pointer to cut the deficit to 23-21. Early in the fourth quarter Kadel made another 3-pointer to cut East’s lead to 31-27.
But those moments were too rare for the Vikings, and the Tigers stretched the lead in the final minutes.
“We got some outstanding looks,” Evans said. “Shots just weren’t falling tonight. It seemed like a lot of the looks we got were just in and out.”
And almost as soon as the Vikings were in the tournament, they are out. They beat good teams this year like West Liberty, Fort Loramie, Covington, Mechanicsburg, Versailles, Milton-Union and Northridge.
“When you’re undefeated that long through the season, and especially with the teams we’ve beaten, it just makes that target even bigger on our backs,” Evans said. “It got tougher and tougher as the season went on, but these girls handled it well.”
The Tigers, instead, will play in their first district final since 2020 when the current senior class was in the eighth grade. The six seniors include starters Weaver, Megan Hollar, Chaley Wade and Bailey Poppe. Astorino, the other starter, is a sophomore and led the Tigers with 11 points. Weaver and Poppe had nine each.
“This is really sweet,” McIntosh said. “The effort they’ve put in this year to get us to this point has been really great.”
Miami East will feel much the same way after, as Evans said, they have time to reflect on the second-best season in program history. They might not have a district trophy or any of the ones that follow, but they will have much to fondly remember.
“I think I’ve gotten a lot closer to every single one of my teammates,” Gross said. “than I ever have.”
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