Carroll girls basketball team faces biggest challenge of season
The Carroll girls basketball program understood the unenviable task that awaited it on Tuesday night against local, state and national power Duncanville.
As the odds would go, Carroll’s chances of pulling off this upset would be staggering. The Lady Dragons (17-14) came into the Class 6A Region I bi-district playoff at Arlington High School without any momentum.
They had lost their last three games, wound up finishing fourth (7-5) in District 7-6A and didn’t play very well against Colleyville Heritage in the Feb. 9 regular season finale, a 54-38 loss. Colleyville Heritage got hot from the perimeter and stayed hot. The Lady Panthers jumped out to a 23-7 lead after the first quarter and never saw the lead dwindle below double digits.
It was a different night because Priscilla Smeenge scored 14 points but senior post Anna Hurlburt was held scoreless.
This has been a difficult season for Carroll because of the offensive struggles. Carroll has been good enough to beat the second division teams in Coppell and Haltom. It also swept Hurst L.D. Bell.
However, this team was swept by Euless Trinity and Colleyville Heritage and suffered what turned out to be a crippling 43-40 loss to Richland. The loss to the Lady Rebels turned out to be the deciding factor. Had Carroll won that game, it would have changed the dynamics of the district race.
In fact, it could have turned into a situation where Carroll, Colleyville Heritage and L.D. Bell would have had to play extra games this past weekend to determine the district’s second, third and fourth postseason seeds. Carroll swept L.D. Bell. L.D. Bell swept Colleyville Heritage. Colleyville Heritage swept Carroll.
The winner of this game advances to the area round to face the winner of Denton Guyer-Flower Mound.
About Duncanville
This mark of this program is that it plays to a standard. Duncanville (30-0) swept through District 8-6A and was never played to within single digits. In fact, Duncanville was not involved in a game that was decided by single digits all season.
The Pantherettes’ tightest game was on Feb. 2 against Cedar Hill. That game was tied, 34-34, going into the fourth quarter before Duncanville erupted for 25 points in the fourth to pull away, 59-49. On Jan 29, South Grand Prairie hung around. The Lady Warriors trailed 44-34 going into the fourth quarter. However, Duncanville used another big fourth quarter (24 points) to come out with a 68-54 victory.
Duncanville’s offense has been nothing but explosive all season. It has scored at least 70 points in 21 of its 30 games and scored more than 80 points 10 times and 90 points twice.
Of course, Carroll is going to have to find a way to squeeze the life out of the ball and try to turn this game into crawl. Expect Duncanville’s defense to harass Carroll’s guards to induce turnovers and create easy transition point. It’s no secret that Carroll has struggled throughout the year protecting the ball.
Carroll was going to have to have huge performances from Smeenge and Hurlburt and hope that Duncanville was really off in order to find a way to pull this off shocker.
This story was originally published February 15, 2016 at 4:15 PM with the headline "Carroll girls basketball team faces biggest challenge of season."