Peoria Richwoods 56, Freeport 19: No one knew what to say. Parents silently hugged their crying daughters. And parents weren’t the only ones to struggle for words after Freeport crashed in the Class 3A girls state basketball title game.
“One of the hardest things I’ve ever done was trying to figure out what to say to the girls during our timeouts,” coach Ryan Pierce said after Saturday’s 56-19 loss to Peoria Richwoods. “When the game was over, our worst nightmare had come true.”
Freeport, also second in state last year, and Richwoods both returned four starters from last year and had split four previous games in two years. Freeport’s two wins in the series had been low-scoring efforts, while Richwoods won both times the score climbed above 50. So trailing 9-5 after one quarter wasn’t a terrible sign for the Pretzels.
But then reserve guard Shyla Nott (15 points) made a trio of 3-pointers in the second quarter and forward Mariah Smith added a fourth. That catapulted Richwoods (34-3) to a 25-8 halftime lead, even though the Knights were shooting 6-for-20 inside the 3-point line.
“They were knocking down a lot of shots,” Freeport center Courtney Shiffer said. “On defense, we should have gone out more on them. We were a little slow on that.”
But once the Pretzels began to concentrate on 3s, Richwoods shot 60 percent inside (9-for-15 the second half), with Katie Murphy (17 points) dominating.
“They are good from inside and out,” point guard Katie Norman said. “We were defending well inside, then they started hitting outside shots.
Then we’d defend outside well and they would hit inside.”
And Freeport wouldn’t hit from anywhere.
After Caitlin Greene’s 3-pointer brought the Pretzels to within 6-5 with 2:55 left in the first quarter, the Pretzels were held to three points over the next 14 minutes.
Freeport had torched Springfield with layups from its half-court offense in a 64-43 semifinal rout, but that’s harder to do against Richwoods.
Coach John Gross said Friday that Freeport had been the only team all year to cause the Knights problems inside. The Pretzels tried too hard to go inside Saturday, committing most of their 24 turnovers trying to force the ball in the lane.
“We didn’t show a willingness to step up and take shots from the outside when they were there,” Pierce said. “We needed to step up and stick some of those jump shots.”
Without room inside, every Pretzel except Shiffer (12 points) struggled. Freeport shot 6-for-38 (17 percent), including 2-for-27 by the other four starters.
“It’s disappointing,” Pierce said, “that this has to be our seniors’ last memory on the basketball court. But soon — maybe not too soon, but in time — we will be able to focus more on the accomplishments that this group has had instead of this last performance.”
-Matt Trowbridge, rrstar.com
