The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Titans use titanic run to oust Pioneers
It was close until it wasn’t. That’s the best way to describe Lorain’s 55-33 sectional semifinal victory over Elyria on Feb. 16.
The Titans trailed, 18-11, with over three minutes to go in the second quarter, and it looked like the 10th-seeded Pioneers were going to stick around.
But Lorain quickly answered, closing on a 12-0 run to take a five-point lead into the half.
Minutes into the third quarter, that 12-0 run ballooned into a 25-1 run that erased any hope the seventh-seeded Titans had given Elyria early on.
“We weren’t making shots, and that’s happened to us before,” Lorain coach Mark Feldmann said. “We went into halftime, and we made a couple of adjustments to our halfcourt offense. And then we got some easy looks and once we got a couple of easy looks I think (Elyria) started to put their heads down.”
Senior Destiny Evans ended the Pioneers’ 10-0 run with an and-one that she converted with just under two and a half minutes left in the second.
The second quarter ended with a Tanisha Llanos layup at the buzzer that was set up by a smart pass from junior Ashley Hisle.
“In the time that she was in, she didn’t score a whole lot and she missed some 3s,” Feldmann said of Hisle. “But right before the half with about four seconds left, she made the right play. She got double- teamed, and I told her before we went out there to go get a bucket. She went down there and got trapped, and instead of forcing up an off-balance 3 out of control, because Coach told her to go get a bucket, she made that extra pass.”
Hisle, the Titans’ leading scorer from last season, had missed the entire regular season with a broken arm. She scored her first points of the season in the third quarter before adding on a free throw later on in the quarter.
Despite being tired after her first game in months, Hisle said she was happy to be back out on the court helping her team win.
“It felt good because I finally get to be a part of the winning,” she said. “I’ve been a part of it before, but like touching the ball and even through the turnovers and the mistakes, I get to say that I won, like really won.”
Evans led all scorers with 17 points, followed by teammate Mackenzie Barricklow with 12 as the only other players in double figures. For Elyria, juniors Cora Sanders and Taylor Mehl led the way with eight points apiece, followed by senior Toni McClinton with seven.
The Pioneers’ season comes to an end with the loss, finishing with a 2-21 record. They took their first and only lead in the second quarter on a Mehl 3-pointer, followed by two baskets from Sanders.
“We have not put together four quarters of a basketball game all season,” Elyria coach Anthony Brown said. “Even in the two wins we had, it was ugly and it wasn’t perfection. When you’re a team that loses, eventually you find a way to get back into that niche of losing.” Next up for Lorain is a meeting with secondseeded Westlake, the cochampions of the Southwestern Conference. It’s another tough test for the Titans, who split the Lake Erie League title three ways this season. “I really feel like we’ve been underestimated,” Evans said of the Titans’ seeding. “And I feel like we have an opportunity to show our district that we are a good team and that we can win it all.”