For 34 games, the Havana girls basketball team hadn’t played like it was starting four sophomores and a junior.
But Monday night, in the Class 1A Jacksonville Supersectional, the Ducks ran into a veteran Jacksonville Routt squad, and their youth was exposed in a 54-47 overtime loss.
“That had to be it,’’ Havana coach Jerry Wilson said about the Rockets’ experience taking over. “Because we made a couple of really bad decisions to open the overtime.”
In fact, the Havana possession chart in the extra period at Illinois College looked like this: two missed shots, turnover, two missed shots, turnover, miss, turnover, layup.
Meanwhile, Routt was taking advantage of Havana’s foul trouble. Routt senior forward Morgan Eilering took it right at Havana’s Macy Brown, who was nursing four fouls, and scored easily on a turnaround jumper. Later, Brown could only watch as Routt senior Katie Lindsey powered in a pair of layups.
Lindsey scored five in the overtime, 10 in the fourth quarter and a game-high 23 overall to lead her team to the state semifinals. Routt (27-6) plays Cowden-Herrick/Beecher City at 12:15 p.m. Friday at Redbird Arena in Normal. The winner plays Saturday for the state title, and the loser plays for third place.
“Coming into the fourth, I hadn’t really contributed and I knew I had to step up,” Lindsey said. “Early in the fourth, we got a couple of nice passes to get the offense going, and everything flowed from there.”
Lindsey also was trying to make up for a ghastly mistake at the end of regulation. With her team leading 45-43 and 14.5 seconds left, Lindsey inbounded the ball under the far basket. But her pass went directly to Havana freshman Kelsey Snowden.
“I was so furious with myself when I did that,” Lindsey said. “I knew I had to make up for it.”
Snowden dribbled into the frontcourt, dished to Brown and headed for the right baseline. Brown drove the lane and found Snowden wide open for a 10-footer that forced overtime.
“I was really pleased with some of the things that Snowden did,” Wilson said. “But overall, I think our youth showed tonight.”
Turnovers and free throws plagued Havana. The Ducks turned over the ball 30 times and finished 8-for-20 from the free-throw line.
“Fundamentally, we just didn’t play very well, and that’s what disappoints me the most,” Wilson said. “We turned the ball over, we didn’t box out, we didn’t trail people into the lane, all things we did at the start of the year but have really struggled with recently.”
The loss to Routt marks the second successive supersectional loss for Havana (30-5) — both in overtime. Havana dropped a 69-62 double-OT decision to Brimfield in 2009.
“I don’t really have an answer,” said Wilson, who also said assistant coach Scott Meyers had a good point.
“He said the last game we played really hard and really well was against Knoxville, and that was in January,’’ Wilson said. “We kind of saw it coming and tried everything we could to stop it, but we couldn’t do it.”
Ben Diggle can be reached at 686-3214 or [email protected].
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