Lady Tigers fall short at district

The basketball season came to a close for the Mountain Home Lady Tigers last Wednesday night with their 50-41 loss to Emmett in the District III 4A girls basketball tounament at Skyview.

Foul trouble and a bad second quarter helped lead to their downfall.

The Lady Tigers shot out to a 4-0 lead early, and led 8-4 with 3:31 left in the first quarter, but Marquina Gilliam, Jessica Egusquiza and Ali Hillman all picked up two quick fouls and went to the bench, and a 10-4 run by Emmett gave them a 14-10 lead after a quarter.

The second quarter saw Emmett score 12 unanswered points to go up 26-10. Mountain Home finally scored their first points of the quarter when Lisa Kellerman hit two free throws with 1:14 left.

Marquina Gilliam hit the Lady Tigers' first field goal of the quarter with 48 seconds left. She scored again to pull Mountain Home to within 10, 26-16 at the half.

Mountain Home never really was able to make up the deficit much in the third period, falling 14 back on several occasions, the closest they came was 36-28, with 1:37 left.

They trailed 40-30 heading into the fourth quarter, with all of Mountain Home's points coming from the foul line, where they were 14 for 14.

Trailing 42-32, with 6:40 left, Ali Hillman led a Lady Tiger surge that saw them cut the deficit to five, 42-37, with 3:44 left. That would be as close as they would get as Emmett cashed in from the line, hitting seven of 12 free-throw attempts down the stretch to hold the Lady Tigers at bay, 50-41.

"We had a bad second quarter again and got in foul trouble in the first half," said Lady Tiger coach Brian English. "Give Emmett credit, they played a better game than we did tonight. They were more prepared than we were, and it's my fault. Obviously, I didn't prepare my girls well enough, all the blame falls on me -- that's what they pay me the big bucks for."

Marquina Gilliam led Mountain Home with 20 points, including a 12 for 12 performance from the free-throw line. Ali Hillman added 11 points, Lisa Kellerman and Jessica Egusquiza both scored four, and Erica Stanton added two points.

Mountain Home ended the night shooting 26 percent (10/39) from the field, and shot only 18 percent (4/22) in the second half. The Lady Tigers missed all 11 three-point attempts. What kept them in the game was their free throws, where they hit 21 of 25 for 84 percent.

Emmett shot 43 percent (16/37) from the field for the game, and 43 percent (3/7) on treys. They converted on 15 of 29 free throws (52 percent).

The Lady Tigers finish the season 11-12 overall.

"It was a great year!" said Coach English. 'That's the hardest thing for them to realize right now, and hopefully at our banquet when we celebrate them, they'll be able to realize a little bit more that they had a whale of a year. They're hurting right now. They wanted to go on and keep playing, but they did have a good year."