With their best player at less than full speed, the Northeast Bearcats relied on a tenacious defense to hold New Franklin’s offense more than 20 points below their season’s average Monday, Mar. 2, stopping the Bulldogs, 34-27 in a Class One girls’ basketball section hosted at Mexico.
Cairo standout Olivia Cross saw her minutes limited due to a recent knee injury, but that didn’t faze her Bearcat teammates who made every effort to pick up the slack. No one is any hotter than Cairo right now as the girls from Northeastern Randolph County have overcome a 4-5 start to their season by winning 20 in a row, not losing since Dec. 20.
True, it was an evening where defenses dominated as both squads made more than their share of turnovers throughout the contest. But to be fair, neither side helped themselves any, thanks to the sub-par shooting performances they had. A large number of long-distance field goal attempts resulted in ‘air balls’ while even finding the basket from less than five feet away proved to be more than problematic for both CAC Conference teams.
In a tight pitchers’ duel, the Bearcats led 4-2 after one period as it took New Franklin well over 10 minutes to make their first field goal. Cairo broke a 7-7 tie by scoring the last five points of the half and they never trailed again, holding a 12-7 lead at intermission. The margin was 19-13 with one quarter to go before the Bearcats went on to widen their advantage to as much as 10 early in the final stanza. New Franklin did slice the deficit to five, 29-24 with less than three minutes left, but that was as close as they could get.
It was Cairo’s second win over the Bulldogs in three meetings this season as the two schools tied for first place in the CAC Conference race with 9-1 league marks. New Franklin thus ended the year at 22-7 as Lily Chitwood closed out her Bulldog basketball career with a 12-point effort. The Bearcat record improves to 24-5 after Chloe Brumley scored 10 points to lead them. Cairo will now play in the Class One quarterfinals Friday night at 6:00 in Salisbury when they take on North Shelby, who were 42-28 winners over Grundy County/Newtown-Harris.
It’s now the boys turn to battle in their sectional contests Tuesday, and we’ll be in Marceline where Brunswick will go up against Green City in a Class One Clash. Pregame is at 5:50 p.m. on KMMO-FM 102.9 and online at kmmo.com, with tipoff at 6 p.m.