Ave Maria (03/06/06)

COLDWATER, Ohio — He knows basketball and he knows basketball players.

And Jeff Roessner knew just why his team won’t be playing in this week’s regional: “Wow, Maria is good.”

Maria, as in Marion Local’s Maria Moeller, who will be playing this fall at Ohio State, put on a dominating individual performance and got some help from teammates down the stretch as the Flyers eliminated Fort Recovery Saturday in the finals of the Division IV district tournament at Coldwater.

Moeller, the Midwest Athletic Conference Player of the Year and its leading scorer, tallied 34 points — including 26 of her team’s first 31 — as Marion Local won 53-46.

Roessner, who has seen plenty of games and players in stints as the boys and girls coach at Fort Recovery, said that on this night the Flyers (18-5) — but especially the 5-foot-7-inch Moeller — were just too good.

“We expected she’d maybe score 20 and we’d hope to hold the other players down, but I don’t think we expected 34.

She really played a great game,” Roessner said in the hallway outside his team’s locker room Saturday night. “I thought we did what we could do against her, but we didn’t have an answer.”

In addition to her game-high 34 points, Moeller also had seven rebounds and six steals.

Despite Moeller’s dominance, the Indians were in position to win until the final minute.

Fort Recovery, which was hampered down the stretch when Abby Niekamp and Ciera Rammel fouled out, led briefly in the third quarter and never trailed by more than six points until Moeller hit a pair of free throws with 26 seconds left to seal the victory.

Niekamp scored 11 for the Indians before leaving with five fouls, while Holly Stein and Tiff Gaerke each contributed seven points. Gaerke also pulled down a game-high 13 rebounds to close out her junior season.

On a night that belonged to Moeller, it was Flyers’ guard Holly Fortkamp who made what may have been a game-saving play.

Fort Recovery, which closes out the season 18-6, went on a run and cut Marion Local’s lead to just two, 46-44, with 2:18 to play when Joanna Snyder hit 1-of-2 free throws.

Marion Local coach Treva Fortkamp, whose team has won seven straight over the Indians and knocked them out of the tournament in three of the last five seasons, called time-out to settle down her team and discuss strategy.

Seconds after putting the ball back into play, Fortkamp did a cross-over dribble into the lane, pulled up and banked in a 10-foot jumper for a 48-44 lead with just over two minutes remaining. The Flyers added four free throws from Moeller and one from Brittany Thobe down the stretch to pull away.

“Instead of a one possession game it’s a two possession game,” the Flyers’ coach said. “That’s why I took that time out ... Fort Recovery’s got a nice team. It’s too bad we had to play in the district and not farther down the (tournament) road.”

Fort’s Roessner agreed that in a game dominated by Moeller, Holly Fortkamp’s short jumper was “huge. If we get it stopped there we’ve got a chance to pull it out.”

With Rammel and Niekamp sitting on the bench down the stretch, the Indians didn’t have an answer.

“Fouls really hurt us tonight ... I’m not saying they weren’t fouls, they just played a huge factor in the outcome of the game,” said Roessner, who sarcastically turned to the Fort crowd and led the cheers when Moeller was called for her first foul of the game in the fourth quarter.

Moeller, who was 9-for-20 from the field and 14-of-18 from the line in Saturday night’s district final, seized control almost from the opening tip, scoring eight of Marion Local’s 10 first quarter points and 12 more in the second as the Flyers built a 25-22 margin at the half.

Fort Recovery turned up the defensive pressure in the third quarter and went on a 7-0 run, turning that five-point deficit into a 29-25 lead when Vicki Roessner hit a jumper at 4:33 of the third.

Niekamp’s jumper at 6:22 had pulled the Indians’ within one point, while Rammel’s 3-pointer at 5:05 gave the Indians at 27-25 lead — the first time they were in front since the closing minute of the first quarter.

The Flyers, who missed their first nine shots of the second half, were desperately seeking a stabilizing force and found it, not surprisingly, in Moeller.

First, on a possession kept alive on an offensive rebound by 6-foot-3-inch teammate Jenna Barhorst, Moeller drained a 3-pointer from the wing to pull Marion within one, 29-28 with 4:06 left in the third period. Less than a minute later, Moeller came up with a steal and hit a short-range jump shot to put the Flyers back ahead.

The Indians, who have struggled for the most part from the free throw line this season, did so Saturday, hitting on just 10-of-22 attempts. The Flyers, paced by Moeller’s 14-of-18, were 21-of 31.

While Moeller was just under 50 percent from the floor (9-for-20), the Indians played outstanding defense on her Marion Local teammates, who shot a combined 6-for-25 in Saturday’s game.

Roessner, who was disappointed but not devastated, said he felt like “we didn’t lose as much as they won. (Moeller) shot the lights out ... I don’t think we did so much bad as they did good.”[[In-content Ad]]