Even with home court advantage and a win streak in tow, the George McDougall girls’ basketball team knew it wouldn’t be an easy road at the Rocky View Sports Association (RVSA) divisional tournament last weekend.
This was underscored on March 3, when the top-ranked Mustangs dropped a 56-50 decision to the Cochrane Cobras in the girls’ gold medal game.
Despite 32 points from George Mac’s Kylie Lebedeff, and a valiant fourth quarter comeback, the Mustangs failed to seize the championship.
“They’re really sad,” Mustangs’ head coach Joe McLaughlin said of his team.
“They fought so hard to come back from a 15-point deficit to tie the game with two minutes left. We thought we had all the momentum, and then to have it taken away was a tough one at home – with the entire crowd behind us. We gave it our best shot, but Cochrane just shot the ball better than us today.”
“You expect close games in championships games,” said Cobras’ head coach Randy Peron. “As much as we coaches want to have blowouts, it’s not going to happen in the title game of any league.”
Cochrane, which beat Springbank in its semifinal (George Mac beat Bert Church in the other semi), opened a 16-12 first-quarter lead in the gold medal game.
Mustangs’ guard Amanda Kerr hit a three-pointer 90 seconds into the second quarter to cut the lead, but George Mac went scoreless for the next six minutes. Cobras’ guard Katrina Bervoc hit two three-pointers in the final three minutes of the half to put Cochrane ahead 30-23 at the break.
“We depend on our outside shooting a lot,” McLaughlin said.
“They just weren’t dropping tonight. We shot 18 for 95 in the game – you don’t win too many games shooting the ball like that.”
George Mac outscored Cochrane 12-11 in the third quarter and continued its comeback effort in the fourth quarter when Lebedeff hit a three-pointer to tie the game at 49 with 3:40 remaining. But Bailey Sethyenko responded with a three-pointer with 1:10 remaining to ice the game for the Cobras.
McLaughlin said playing from behind the entire game was taxing on his players.
“It’s so hard, as it takes so much energy,” he said. “That’s part of the reason you miss so many shots. You’re so burnt out from hustling on defence. We put in a new defence for Cochrane and some of the girls were lost early on where they should be. Once they tightened it up, we came back.”
“We showed a lot of determination and we got through some dry spells when they hit some three point shots,” Peron said. “We knew they would have a push back, but we stopped them when we had to. It’s always an electric atmosphere, but we kind of got the crowd quiet by taking the lead early and maintaining our point spread. We didn’t really hear the crowd until the fourth quarter.”
Cochrane moved on to the 3A Zones tournament in Olds, while George Mac opened its 4A Zones against Foothills Composite from Okotoks at home on March 6. The Mustangs hosted Chestermere at home on March 8 at 6 p.m., after the City View went to press.
The top team of those three squads will host the final on March 9 against the second-place team at 7 p.m.
The Bert Church Chargers dropped its semifinal RVSA divisional game in overtime to the eventual silver-winning Chestermere Lakers.
George McDougall lost its semifinal to the champion Cochrane Cobras.
