The Milan News-Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Tough times
Girls fall to Airport, boys lose to Dundee
By Jerry Hinnen, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: February 14, 2008
During the Milan girls' basketball team's miserable start to this season, the Big Reds might have been happy with a 48-38 loss to Airport in which they led 35-30 at the end of three quarters.
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But with Milan entering Thursday's match-up with the Jets on a two-game winning streak and having led by as many as 14 points in the third quarter in their seniors' final regular season home game, no one was celebrating in the Milan locker room when the visitors prevailed.
"The girls were pretty discouraged," said head coach Jeff Davis. "When they made their run, we didn't rebound, we couldn't hit a shot, and they hit theirs. That's pretty much it."
Milan fell to 2-16 overall and 1-12 in Huron League play.
Despite playing without ill starting sophomore center Allie McAfee, the Big Reds twice led by 14 points midway through the third quarter, once at 30-16 on a Lindsey Lammers three-pointer and again at 35-21 when Brittany Auten scored with 2:21 to play in the period.
But unfortunately for the Big Reds, that would prove to be their last point for almost all of the game's remaining 10 minutes. Airport responded by hitting back-to-back-to-back threes, cutting the lead by nine to 35-30 entering the fourth quarter.
Milan held the Jets to a pair of baskets over the first 3:20. But with nothing happening for the Big Reds on the offensive end, Airport took its first lead since 5-2 with 4:40 to play and by the 1:21 mark had stretched it to 10, 45-35, and out of Milan's reach.
The Jet run would eventually hit 27-0 before Ashley Agar's three-pointer with less than a second remaining in the game gave Milan its only points of the fourth quarter.
"We haven't had a ton of experience with that kind of situation," Davis said. "We panicked a little bit. They'd shot terribly through the first three quarters and we knew that wasn't going to continue. We knew they were going to make a run. It just turned out to be huge."
Also "huge," he said, was the absence of McAfee, which both hurt Milan's ability to grab defensive rebounds during Airport's runs or go inside for a basket.
"We weren't able to establish an inside scoring presence. Airport left the lane open, but we weren't able to take advantage and she would have helped with that," he said. "Defensively, we executed relatively well for three quarters. We did a good job collapsing our zone around (Airport center) Nagy. But when they took the lead and we had to go to man-to-man, we didn't have anyone to match up."
Lammers continued her impressive return from injury with 14 points to lead the Big Reds. She was followed by Agar with eight, Lani Ernest with seven, Sarah Heath and Devon Cosner with three each, Auten with two, and Whitney Farmer with two.
Airport scored the first five points of the game before Lammers's bucket started a 10-0 run that would give the Big Reds a two-point lead after the first quarter. Milan would go on to hold Airport scoreless for the final 3:47 of the first half, using a three-point play from Heath and a three-pointer from Lammers to grow a 17-14 lead to nine points at halftime.
Milan will face Onsted on the road Saturday in its final regular season game before hosting Chelsea Monday in first-round action of their district tournament.
The Big Reds faced the same opponent in last season's district opener and fell to the Bulldogs by a wide margin, but Davis said that if the Big Reds can regain the confidence and intensity they showed in their wins over Jefferson and Dundee, they could spring the upset.
"They're a very good team and they execute well," Davis said "But they're not the same team from last year. If we go in with the attitude that we can play with them and we play well, it's going to be a close game."
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