Eagles end Tribe's season

ELIDA, Ohio — The Tribe had the size.
The Eagles had the quickness.
They also had an uncanny ability to knock down shots.
Fort Recovery High School’s girls basketball team had a difficult time keeping Jensen Hiegel in check and had a fourth-quarter rally come up short Thursday in a 56-43 loss to the Liberty-Benton Eagles in the Division III district semifinal at Elida.
“We kept on saying that Hiegel was their best player because we knew she was tough and she would make plays,” said FRHS coach Brian Patch, whose team ended the season 19-5. “Unfortunately tonight she pretty much almost single-handedly kicked our butt herself. We had a tough time guarding her, had trouble staying in front. She made a lot of good plays for them.”
Hiegel, like the rest of her teammates, was nearly flawless from the field. She was a perfect 10-for-10 in the first half, scoring 24 of her game-high 28 points in the opening 16 minutes.
Liberty-Benton (16-8) advances to the district semifinal at 2 p.m. Saturday against fourth-ranked Columbus Grove, which defeated Coldwater 63-44 in the first semifinal Thursday.
With a 50-32 lead after three quarters, the Eagles (16-8), who were 20-for-29 (69 percent) from the field, opted to pass the ball around the court to kill time rather than take shots. The strategy worked for the first four minutes of the frame until the Indians went on an 11-2 run to get within three possessions.
Whitney Will — she led the Indians with 17 points — hit a pair of free throws, then following an Eagle turnover she made a basket and a foul shot at the other end to make it 50-37.
Liberty-Benton freshman Savannah Richards sank both of her bonus free throws with 3 minutes, 22 seconds, left to play, and FRHS sophomore Grace Thien responded by swishing a 3-pointer from the right wing.
Nearly a minute later, Jocelyn Kaiser scored on a fast break and Siefring split a pair of shots from the charity stripe to cut the deficit to single digits, 52-43.
But that’s when the well went dry for the Indians.
“When we needed to get a stop we couldn’t get a stop, and when we needed a bucket we just couldn’t hit shots,” Patch said.
Siefring scored 14 points to join Will in double figures.
“We struggled outside,” said Patch, whose team was 2-of-15 from behind the arc and 12-of-31 in front of it to finish 34.8 percent from the field. “We struggled to score from everyone else on our team besides those two.
“The bad thing is … we haven’t been playing that well of late. Not playing hard and not being willing to make plays, in a big game like this that came back to bite us in the butt.”
Richards made a basket and a foul shot to get the Eagles’ lead back to double digits.
“Give them credit, they didn’t give up,” Liberty-Benton coach Nate Irwin said. “They kept battling.”
As much as the Indians were able to surge in the second half, the stellar offense from the Eagles before intermission is what hurt Fort Recovery the most.
After Will scored on an assist from Thien to tie the game with 3:13 left in the first quarter, Hiegel had five consecutive points to push the lead to 14-9. Sydney Lasiter drained a 3-pointer from the left corner and Hiegel added another bucket with 7.9 seconds remaining.
Hiegel sliced through and around the Fort Recovery defense, scoring 13 of the Eagles’ 19 points in the first quarter.
The 5-foot, 9-inch junior also scored the Eagles’ first six points of the second half, and later added a 3-pointer from the right wing and a pair of free throws. Her only blemish before heading into the locker room was a missed free throw in the first quarter.
“Jensen stepped up,” said Irwin, whose team led 19-9 after the first quarter and 38-19 at halftime. “She’s had some pretty good games for us but that first half was probably the best basketball in three years that she’s played. Played as close to a perfect half of basketball as you can.
“That cushion we built in the first half we needed every point of it, it seemed like, in the end. It got a little dicey in the fourth quarter.”
Hiegel finished 11-of-12 from the field and was 6-for-7 from the free-throw line. She also had five rebounds and an assist.
“She was just so aggressive tonight,” Irwin said. “She is a great athlete but she is only 5-9. She is our tallest player. That is the closest thing we have to a post threat this year.”