By JACK CLARK
jackclark@mvn.net
WOODLAWN — The Woodlawn Lady Cardinals overcame a four-point halftime deficit, to gain a decisive 59-49 victory over the South Central Lady Cougars on Monday night.
The most interesting part of Monday’s result is that the Woodlawn victory creates a three-way tie for first place in the Midland Trail Conference.
And this is only mid-December!
Woodlawn coach Eric Helbig explained the logjam.
“The three-way tie for first place is between Woodlawn (8-3, 3-1 MTC), South Central (6-1, 3-1 MTC) and North Clay,” said Helbig. “Each team is done playing each other for the regular season and each has two conference games remaining. All three teams will be in the MTC tourney at Wayne City, during the first week of January. The conference coaches are seeding the tourney this week.”
The MTC conference title may be up in the air for weeks to come.
“This was an outstanding, hard-fought game on both sides. We feel very fortunate to pull this off,” Helbig said. “The kids played their tails off and really deserved it.”
The team from Farina held a 24-17 lead just before halftime, but Alexa Capps hit a big 3-pointer with just seconds left to cut the lead to four and give the Lady Cardinals some momentum going into the locker room.
“That shot was huge and gave us a lift,” said Helbig. “Alexa has hit some big shots for us this year, and that was just another example.”
In the third quarter, the Lady Cougars tried to focus more of their attention on Capps, which allowed Woodlawn to continually get the ball inside to Mallory Hapeman who not only scored at will, but forced South Central into foul trouble.
“Mallory did a great job of posting in the third quarter and our guards did a great job of finding her,” Helbig said. “Their bench isn’t too deep, so even when we didn’t score, every foul we could earn on them was golden.”
Hanging onto a tenuous six-point lead in the fourth quarter, Leah Sutton hit a three-pointer which gave Woodlawn a nine point lead with two minutes to play.
From that point on, South Central was forced to scramble offensively and foul. Forcing the Lady Cardinals to put the game away at the charity stripe.
Capps led all scorers with 23 points for the Lady Cardinals. Hapeman added another 16 and Sutton had 10.
The Lady Cardinals host Marissa Thursday evening.
Woodlawn 59, South Central 49
South Central 13 11 12 13—49
Woodlawn 10 10 16 23—59
South Central (6-2, 3-1)
Pollard 5 1-1 11, Morton 1 0-0 2, Lotz 2 0-0 4, Uphold 3 4-6 10, Jones 3 4-4 10, Matheny 6 0-0 12. Totals: 20 9-11 49
Woodlawn (8-3, 3-1)
Verhines 1 2-2 4, Lowery 2 2-4 6, Capps 8 4-10 23, Hapeman 5 6-8 16, Sutton 3 3-4 10. Totals: 19 17-28 59
3-pt goals: Woodlawn 4 (Capps 3, Sutton 1). Team fouls: Woodlawn 13, S. Central 23. Turnovers: Woodlawn 8, S. Central 10
