EUDORA Things ended poorly for the Iola girls Thursday night when they ran into a talented Eudora team in the opening round of 4A substate.
The Fillies hung around with the Cardinals for a half but Eudoras stranglehold defense kept Iola to just six total second-half points, ending in a 50-22 loss.
Tonight isnt really an indication of the growth of this team, Carlson said. Weve come so far. At the start of the year, teams could have pressed us and pushed us around but now they have to go somewhere else to get their points. And our defense has improved 100 percent from where we started.
The loss drops the Fillies to 9-12 to end the the season.
The Fillies splashed a three from senior Madisyn Holloway to start the game before Eudora broke open an 11-2 run which forced Iola to play from behind for almost the entire game.
The Cardinals pushed their lead to 10 in the second but thanks in part to the rebounding and put-back efforts of seniors Ellie Carson and Piper Moore, the Fillies managed to cut the lead to nine by halftime.
Unfortunately, thats when Eudoras vice-grip took hold. Iola scored two points in the third quarter while the Cardinals grew their lead to 23 by quarters end.
They just play really good defense, Carlson said. And it wasnt their offense that hurt us as much as it was their defense and then we got frustrated. We didnt have anywhere to pass the ball. We scored most of our points when they were in man early in the game but when they went to zone, there werent very many gaps. They were just really, really quick.
Eudora pushed its lead to 30 with five minutes to play, triggering the running clock until the end of the game.
Carson led the Fillies with eight points while Holloway had six. Eudora junior Riley Hiebert had 29 points for the Cardinals.
Carlson noted how far this Fillies team that came into the season needing to replace all five starters from last years team came from the start of the season. She also pointed out that if it wasnt for a bad mid-season stretch where they lost six straight games, five by eight or fewer points, they possibly wouldnt have drawn such a tough opponent to start the tournament.
We just got better and better, Carlson said. And really we ran into a lot of those close losses in the middle of the season which made our assignment a lot harder than it could have been. But that doesnt mean we had a bad season.
The Fillies say goodbye to five seniors including Carson, Moore, Holloway, Shaylee Sutterby and Kassy Shelby.
Each one of them has really accepted the roles that they have, Carlson said. Ellie brought us scoring and effort, Piper really did great things rebounding the ball for us, Cassie was a hustler for us, Shaylee has improved a ton and has been a great shot blocker and rebounder for us and I cant say enough about (Holloway). Shes a great shooter whos kind of timid but on the court this year she really turned it loose. We saw a lot of improvement with every one of our girls.
The Fillies will move into the spring sports season which started practice back on Monday.
Iola (7-9-2-422) (2pt/3pt-FT-F-TP) Carson 2/0-4-3-8, Holloway 0/2-0-1-6, Moore 0/0-2-1-2, Morrison 1/0-0-3-2, Castellanos-Rodrigo 1/0-0-2-2, Sprague 1/0-0-0-2, Sutterby 0/0-0-2-0. TOTALS: 5/2-6-12-22.
