Versailles heading to Elite Eight
Tigers escape with victory
By George Starks

SPRINGFIELD- With 36.1 seconds remaining, Miami East senior Angie Mack looked at the scoreboard, then rolled her eyes as the score read: Versailles 43, Miami East 37.

Mack realized it was all over and the chances of coming back again to overtake a tough Versailles team was about as slim as it could get. Versailles held a 29-19 lead at the break and was forced to come from behind late in the game Wednesday as the Tigers escaped with a 47-40 regional semi-final victory over Miami East.

Entering the third quarter, the Vikings went in to their patented zone and the havoc soon began. The Vikings scored six unanswered; both coming from three point bombs and the 10 point bulge had been cut to a 29-25 deficit. In fact, the Tigers never see their first points of the quarter until the 4:19 mark when Emily Harman hit a pair from the charity stripe, making the score 31-28. Versailles got its first field goal with 1:06 left in the frame, that coming from senior Brooke Pothast.

With eight minutes left to play, the Tigers were clinging to a 34-30 lead as the Vikings had outscored Versailles 11-5 in the frame.

“You can never relax against Miami East,” said a very happy Jackie Stonebreaker. “They throw that zone at you and we tend to stand. We just don’t know how to move against it. Miami East is so big and it’s a heck of a defense that they throw. When you can’t hit from the outside and we couldn’t get it inside. We weren’t doing our job on the inside the way we are capable.”

Holding a 10-7 lead after one, Stonbreaker went to her bench and brought in senior Chloe Warvel. Warvel picked up two huge buckets for the Tigers, with one being a put back off an offensive rebound.

“Chloe did a real nice job for us coming off the bench. She stepped up big,” said Stonebreaker.

The one in the shadows for the Tigers came in the form of Harmon. The Tigers senior scored a dozen with 10 of those points coming from the line.

“Unbelievable! She played great tonight,” Stonebreaker said. “There was one play she didn’t play well and that was a three point play that she fouled on. Emily redeemed herself by hitting two free throws.”

With the win, the Tigers will play Saturday for the right to go to the state’s final four in Columbus. If fans has come to expect one thing when the Miami East and Versailles girls hook up on the hardwood, it’s this: It’s going to get physical and, at times, brutal.

Such was the case Wednesday in the two team’s regional semi-final game at Springfield. With things starting to slip away from the Vikings grip, in yet another chapter in their epic saga, the inevitable finally happened. With 5.1 seconds remaining, Versailles senior Emily Harman and senior Ellie Gearhart of Miami East both went up for a rebound. Harmon won the board but was thrown to the floor by a frustrated Gearhart, knowing her career as a Lady Viking was about to come to an end.

Standing in their way will be the Greenview Lady Rams, to be played Saturday at 1:30 p.m. Greenview popped Columbus Bishop Ready in the opening game of the night.