Season ends for Jackson girls basketball team in sectional round

CEDAR HILL, Mo. -- When it started to go downhill, it went downhill fast.

The Jackson girls basketball saw a season of promise come to an end, 56-31, at the hands of St. Joseph's Academy Wednesday night.

Senior Sydney Stipanovich, a 6-foot-3 senior forward, scored 19 points as the Angels advanced to Saturday's sectional championship in St. Louis.

St. Joseph's guards Mary Barton (six points) and Emily Haring (eight points) efficiently ran the Angels' offense, constantly finding Stipanovich inside for easy layups or short jumpers. Defensively, the Angels' pressure defense simply wore the Indians down.

"We knew they were really good going into it," said Jackson coach Tyler Abernathy after his squad finished the season at 19-11. "[Haring and Barton] played really well. I knew they were good; I didn't know they were that good.

"And then, obviously, Stipanovich has been a bad matchup for us two years in a row now. We just have not quite found that answer, regardless if it's trying to double from the wings, or trying to front and help with the lob, we just haven't found an answer yet. Once again, she came out tonight and played really well. We just struggled at the guard."

The Indians came out early with a lot of emotion, probably stemming from the fact the Jackson boys squad had just knocked off Chaminade before the girls' game. The Indians trailed 11-7 after one period, and had pulled to within 15-12 early in the second when the bottom fell out.

St. Joseph's scored the next 17 points to take a 32-12 lead at halftime, with Stipanovich scoring 13 points.

"We have struggled offensively," Abernathy said. "We go through a stretch offensively where we don't score, and that struggle offensively leads us to have some lapses on defense. It seems like we played really well defensively there, and then we struggled offensively and we weren't quite getting back in transition defense as fast as we were, we weren't quite doubling the post as quick as we were. We allowed missed shots on the offensive end to kind of frustrate us on the defensive end."

St. Joseph's built the lead to 41-12 early in the third on Harin's 3-pointer at the 5:55 mark. Cassidi Tomsu, who led Jackson with 10 points, stopped the bleeding with a 3-pointer moments later to make it 41-15, but the damage had been done.

"They go on runs as well as anybody," Abernathy said. "We talked before the game, 'No 6-0 runs.' If they went on a 4-0 run, we made sure we got off a great shot. But they went on one there and they just kind of spread it open. ... In the last two minutes of the second quarter, it just kind of got out of hand. It went from, like, eight to 20 [points] before you could blink."

St. Joseph's coach Julie Matheny said jumping on Jackson early was an important part of the game plan.

"We just picked up our intensity on the defensive end," Matheny said. "I told the girls, after watching the Jackson boys win, at the buzzer, that's there's all sorts of emotions going on, and we've got to play through these first four or five minutes.

"Once we put in a full-court press, I thought our guards did a nice job attacking that."

Jackson senior guard Danielle Daume scored six points in her final game.

"We really improved throughout the whole season," she said. "We never stopped working. These girls put so much time in it throughout the season. We took some tough losses, but we played some really good teams, and I think we definitely learned from that. ... Hopefully in the next couple of years we can get past sectionals."

Fellow senior Megan Williams said the Indians played with a lot of emotion early.

"We just knew we had to give it our all," Williams said after being limited to three points in her final game. "It just didn't work out to our benefit, I guess."

She has some advice for those players who follow her in years to come.

"Give it your all, all the time," she said. "Play every game like it's your last, and enjoy it, because it goes by fast."

Abernathy likes how his seniors led through some tough times this season, and thinks the Indians are building toward bigger and better things.

"I'm proud of our seniors," he said. "Two years ago, it had been four or five years since we won a district. We won one last year. Went to the sectionals, ran into St. Joe. We won another one this year. Like I told them in there, hopefully in five or six years when they come back, they can look up on the wall and see the banner. They can be very proud of what they started. I think we got a real good thing going here. Hopefully in the next couple of years you're gonna see us in these playoff situations quite a bit."

St. Joseph's 11 21 12 12 -- 56

Jackson 7 5 8 11 -- 31

ST. JOSEPH'S (56) -- Emily Haring 8, Mary Barton 6, Mary Scmank 2, Alexandra Gorman 4, Natalie Sims 6, Elizabeth Mattern 2, Sophie Vogt 2, Jacquelyn Karl 3, Sydney Stipanovich 19, Hannah Western 4. FG: 23, FT: 6-8, F: 15. (3-pointers: Haring 2, Barton 1, Karl 1. Fouled out: none)

JACKSON (31) -- Cassidi Tomsu 10, Rachel Crites 3, Emily Davidson 4, Emily Gartman 5, Danielle Daume 6, Megan Williams 3. FG: 10, FT: 6-9, F: 12. (3-pointers: Daume 2, Tomsu 1, Gartman 1, Williams 1. Fouled out: none.)

The Jackson girls bench waits out the final moments of the Class 5 sectional game, which they lost 56-31 to St. Joseph's Academy on Wednesday in Cedar Hill, Mo.