Big Blue Disk 49/bbd49.zip/LAPSE.ASC

Text File | 1990-09-18 | 4KB | 56 lines

     When it was over Patricia Walker stood shaking her head.  She and her
 Shreveport 15-and-under AAU basketball teammates were waiting to receive their
 silver medals.  Normally a silver medal would have been a source or pride, but
 for Walker and her Shreveport teammates, the medals were just a reminder of
 what could have been.  Twice, Shreveport stood on the verge of a national
 championship.  Twice, North Carolina turned apparent defeat into victory.
 North Carolina won the AAU/USA Junior Olympics gold medal by shutting out
 Shreveport in the final 3:36 of an 83-79 victory Saturday afternoon at
 Huntington High.

     Earlier in the day, North Carolina forced the final by outscoring
 Shreveport 13-3 in the last three minutes of an 87-82 victory.  "It hurts bad,
 but the best team won," Walker said.  "We could've won the game.  But I guess
 it wasn't meant to be.  That was eerily apparent when North Carolina Coach
 Rick Chappell called a time out with 3:36 left and his team trailing 79-74 in
 the second game.  Some four hours earlier, his team had been in a similar
 position, trailing by the same 79-74 score in the first game.  "I wasn't
 thinking about that," Chappell said.  "I was just trying to make some
 adjustments."  His moves worked.  First, Jennifer Howard hit a 3-pointer to
 bring Carolina within 79-77.  Then, Carolina went inside.

     Forward Tiffani Johnson was fouled and made two free throws to tie
 with a minute to play.  "Their big girls hurt us on the inside," Shreveport's
 Kendra Neal said.  "They got a lot of rebounds and when they did, they put it
 up."  Still, Shreveport had its chance to win the game.  But Konecka Drakeford
 stole an errant pass and converted the turnover into a layup.  Shreveport's
 chance to tie failed when Mary Lowry's shot missed and Carolina rebounded.
 Shannon Spencer's two free throws with six seconds left removed any doubt
 about the outcome.  "We had the game in our favor and we let it slip away,"
 Neal said.  After 25 straight wins, Shreveport had two games slip away in the
 same day.

     The second game was almost an identical replay of the first.
 Shreveport held a five-point lead, but was unable to hold it.  I felt like we
 were going to win it," Shreveport Coach Miles Holladay said.  "I felt like we
 were mature enough to hold on.  Today just wasn't a good day for us.  "We had
 lapses of intensity.  We never maintained that level of total intensity.
 Maybe fatigue was a factor."  The loss was particularly disheartening for
 both Walker and Neal. Walker made amends for an eight-point first game with a
 34-point effort in the second game.  Neal, who had 25 points in the first
 game, found a tougher Carolina defense in the second game and scored 17
 points.  "They did a good job on me in the second game and we tried to get the
 inside going," Neal said.  But the inside belonged to Carolina.

     The Carolina Flight's front line - Drakeford, Johnson and Tracy Connor
 - combined for 55 points.  Drakeford, the tournament MVP, did the most damage
 with 28 points, following a 24-point game in the opener.  Connor added 19.  It
 was Drakeford that hurt Shreveport the most.  She had six straight points in
 Carolina's 13-3 run in the first game.  In the second game, she came back
 from a leg injury to figure in the decisive 9-0 run.  The losses sent
 Shreveport to its second straight second-place national finish.  This time,
 though, the losses hurt a little more.  They saw the gold, but had to settle
 for the silver.  That's what is hardest to take - knowing we could've done
 something about it," Holliday said.

          ***  From The (Shreveport) Times, Shreveport, LA  ***