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Lady Raccoons battle nation’s elite in tourney title game
BY ANDREW MAY, Staff Writer
Should the population of Frisco ever stop booming and hence new high schools cease forming, the Lady Raccoons may eventually find themselves playing at the 5A level. Nice to know the transition would be seamless.
Frisco moseyed down murderer’s row at the Sandra Meadows Classic and stared down a pair of the nation’s top teams. That it was able to make it to the championship game of the toughest tournament in the metroplex is a shot in the arm for the Lady Raccoons and a lethal injection for every opponent remaining on the schedule.
The end result was a 55-44 loss to Houston Bellaire (25-0) in the title tilt, but the means to the end were perhaps more impressive than the narrow defeat to the No. 5 ranked team in the nation by USA Today. Frisco chopped down Mesquite, Plano East and Coppell just for the right to play Duncanville (20-2), the state’s fifth-ranked 5A team. The Lady Raccoons put the clamps down defensively to hold the Panthers to their second-lowest output of the season. Sophomore guard Tiffany Moore dumped in a game-high 14 points and held Duncanville’s Veronica Mergerson to a measly seven points to pace the 49-47 semifinal victory.
“It was a wild finish,” head coach Bob Rose said. “I know Duncanville didn’t want to lose to us at their place in their own tournament.”
Once in the championship game, Rose knew it would be an uphill battle to bully Bellaire. Frisco served notice that it wasn’t intimidated by taking a 14-12 lead after the first quarter. But the Cardinals took charge in the next two quarters, outscoring Frisco (23-3, 4-0) by a combined 14 points to build a comfortable lead. The Lady Raccoons whittled away at the deficit, shrinking the margin to single digits several times before Bellaire responded.
“Every time we cut it to seven or eight, they hit a big three,” Rose said. “They weren’t getting layups, they were hitting big-time shots with a hand in their face. It wasn’t luck, they’re good shooters.”
Senior post Kierra Mallard, who along with junior guard Shay Cooney-Williams made the all-tournament team, scored a game-high 13 points in the setback. Mallard averaged 14.2 points in the five-game tournament, thanks to a 24-point outing against Plano East. Cooney-Williams averaged 12 and Moore also finished in double figures.
Even with Dani Thomas back for the championship game after missing the previous two contests with a fever, it turned out to be the 1-of-10 shooting from the field in the second quarter that Frisco failed to recover from.
“We were getting ours shots,” Rose said. “Now we’ve got to make sure we’re hitting them.”
Rose said the Sandra Meadows Classic was the most difficult tournament he’s ever been involved in through and through, which certainly bodes well for the Lady Raccoons after the success they attained.
“We have the big-game feel now,” he said. “It’s just going to give us better focus and push us to play at a level we haven’t hit yet.”
Getting a feel for big games couldn’t have happened at a better time. McKinney Boyd (15-7, 4-0) comes to town today to square off in the battle of the district unbeatens. It is the first step in what Rose hopes will begin the separation process for Frisco.
“If people take care of what they should, it could start to separate,” he said. “It could definitely get more separated or jumbled up.”
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