Meadow Heights girls basketball team holds off Notre Dame 56-54

~ Meadow Heights nearly lost a 10-point lead in the final minutes

Meadow Heights' determination not to lose Monday's girls basketball game nearly cost it a victory.

The Panthers switched to a stall with a nine-point lead and more than four minute left at Notre Dame.

"It's not frustrating, it's just different from what we're usually doing because we have to run the play and we can't do anything wrong," Meadow Heights senior Erin Bollmann said. "You obviously can see we did it wrong."

The Panthers' lead evaporated, but the Bulldogs' layup to tie at the buzzer missed, which gave Meadow Heights a 56-54 victory.

"The lead we got was because we were cutting through the lane and just making smart passes and mostly cuts," Panthers senior Whitney Welker said. "But whenever we started doing the stall, we became stagnant. I think that's what kind of made us lose our game and get our heads out of it. But we do need to work on our stall."

The Panthers (3-1) grabbed a 56-46 lead on a pair of Welker free throws with 3 minutes, 24 seconds left, but the Bulldogs (2-2) whittled their deficit to two points by scoring the next eight points.

Meadow Heights junior Taylor Cureton had two chances to pad the lead in the closing seconds, but she missed four free throws over the final 13.8 seconds. That set the stage for Notre Dame senior Summer Burger, who drove to the basket and got up a contested layup just before the buzzer sounded, but it hit the rim and bounced away.

"I was really excited," Burger said. "I thought it was going to go in, but the chances just didn't fall our way."

Notre Dame coach Renee Peters said it was a fitting way for the game to end.

"We had the shot we wanted at the end, and just again missed layups," she said while shaking her head. "I don't even want to watch this film."

The Bulldogs shot 41 percent (21 of 51) and missed several shots near the basket.

"I don't know how many layups we missed, and that was painful," Peters said.

The first quarter looked promising for the Bulldogs after Welker picked up her third foul late in the opening period. But the senior still managed to score a game-high 23 points in limited minutes.

"Mentally, I even told coach after my third foul that I'm fine, I'm fine, but he still took me out because he knew I had to wait until the second quarter," she said. "It makes me not as much of a threat on defense."

Welker scored seven points in the second quarter, but she spent most of the third quarter on the bench after her fourth foul with 6:43 left in the period.

"He didn't tell me anything about it," Welker said about Panthers coach Mark Vertichhio. "He just kept looking at me and he would kind of mumble under his breath, 'Gosh Whitney, what were you thinking?' But I knew I wasn't going to go in until the fourth."

The burden of scoring fell to Bollmann with Welker riding the pine. She answered the call with 21 points.

"It puts a lot of pressure on me," Bollmann said. "Coach said, 'Erin, you have to start scoring' because I was having trouble in the beginning. I started making layups, and that's what we needed to do and we finally got up.

"I get a little nervous because I know I'm going to have the ball 75 percent of the time. But I know that it's my time to do what I need to do, and I need to go make a basket."

The Panthers barely shot worse than the Bulldogs. They shot 40.8 percent (20 of 49), which included hitting 33 percent (7 of 21) of their shots in the second half. Notre Dame committed 34 turnovers, while Meadow Heights had 33 in the game.

The victory was a bit of revenge for the Panthers, who lost to Notre Dame by two points in last year's Show Me Center Holiday Classic.

"It's absolutely fantastic," Bollmann said about Monday's win. "I was jumping up and down. It's not even a championship and we finally beat Notre Dame. We're known not to beat them, so it's finally here and we finally beat them."

Burger said the Bulldogs also used last year's game as motivation.

"That gave us a lot of motivation to come out and prove we could do it again this year," she said. "Being on our home court and being seeded right after them in the Christmas tournament was a lot of motivation to prove that we're just as good."

The teams won't be able to meet for the Holiday Classic title this year because Notre Dame is the No. 3 seed and Meadow Heights the No. 2. But both teams would like a rematch in less than three weeks in the semifinals.

Meadow Hts 16 18 7 15 -- 56

Notre Dame 14 16 12 12 -- 54

MEADOW HEIGHTS (56) -- Whitney Welker 23, Taylor Cureton 6, Erin Bollmann 21, Kiana Hotop 2, Heather Baremore 4. FG 20, FT 15-24, F 14. (3-pointers: Welker 1. Fouled out: none)

NOTRE DAME (54) -- Brooke Bohnert 6, Summer Burger 22, Madison Huckstep 6, Miranda Fowler 18, Annie Siebert 2. FG 21, FT 10-13, F 20. (3-pointers: Fowler 2. Fouled out: Karsen Powers)