Lady Cougars go down fighting
By Jim McCarter Contributing sportswriter

"Boy, did we battle them for 32 minutes, or what?" Carroll's proud girls' basketball coach Mike McCroskey said after his team was eliminated in the Lewis Cass Regional 59-35 by Class 2A, No. 2 Oak Hill Saturday morning. "This is my 23rd year (coaching girls' basketball) and I told the kids in the locker room I can't remember being prouder of a team after a loss. For 32 minutes we played hard and never backed off."

The Lady Cougars (13-10) gave their best, but Oak Hill (25-0) had too much firepower. Led by point guard Courtney Moses (averaging 15.4 points and 6.5 assists) and 6-foot-4 center Ashley Pickering (14.1 pts., 10.5 rebounds and 3.6 blocks) the Eagles had steamrolled over all comers by a 65.8 - 38.6 average winning margin. Oak Hill defeated Fort Wayne Luers 51-43 in the Regional championship game and will face Garrett in the Elkhart semistate Saturday.

"We knew we had to take away Moses," McCroskey said. "She scored 20 points on Madison Grant in the first half. We also wanted to go at Pickering to get her in foul trouble. Even Bill Russell, if he got 12 blocked shots, fouled once or twice, but we sure never got that call."

Carroll held Moses to just eight points, but stopping Pickering proved to be too much for the Lady Cougars whose tallest player is just 5-8. Pickering dominated the game, recording a triple-double with 19 points, 12 rebounds, 12 blocked shots and was whistled for just one foul.

"Carroll did a great job of taking away our guard penetration," Oak Hill coach Todd Law said. "And we didn't shoot the ball as well from the perimeter as we usually do.

"Obviously our size was an advantage. Ashley (Pickering) allows our guards to gamble defensively, knowing she is behind them to protect the basket. We wanted to take Carroll's perimeter shooters away and I think we did a pretty good job of that."

Carroll got off to a terrible start, committing five turnovers in the first 4:00 to fall behind 11-0, then played its best 4:00 of the game.

McCroskey put Jess Yoder in the game and the freshman guard's aggressive play at both ends of the court woke up the Lady Cougars. Quinci Eller hit a pair of 3-pointers, Jess Yoder turned two offensive rebounds into lay ups and Morgan Yoder added a free throw for an 11-3 Carroll run. With 1:07 left in the first quarter Carroll trailed just 14-11 and the Lady Cougars' large following started to believe. Oak Hill finished the quarter with a 5-2 run, but the Lady Cougars were still in the game, trailing just 19-13.

"Carroll has a nice team," Law said. "They played very, very well over the last four or five minutes of the first quarter. They played us head-to-head. And Carroll is a young team with a very good coach. They have a great future."

The second quarter didn't go so well for the Lady Cougars. Oak Hill scored the first nine points of the quarter for a 28-13 advantage and never looked back. Pickering had seven points, three rebounds and five blocks in the quarter, as the Golden Eagles pulled away to a 38-19 half-time lead.

Carroll struggled to score again in the third quarter allowing Oak Hill to build a commanding 55-27 advantage heading into the fourth quarter.

Eller paced Carroll with 12 points, three rebounds and three steals. J. Yoder scored 10 and had four steals and four deflections. Abby Reinke and M. Yoder led the Lady Cougars on the boards with six and five, respectively.

The Lady Cougars' four graduating seniors, Krystal Brazel, Jaime McCarter, Brooke Yoder and Morgan Yoder ended their high school basketball careers with their heads held high. The 2007-08 seniors led a team that will be remembered for ending 10 years of losing, posting a 13-10 record and winning the Lady Cougars' first sectional title since 1998.