STRATTANVILLE, Pa. (EYT/D9) – Frances Milliron sank a pair of free throws with four seconds remaining to seal a 46-42 Clarion-Limestone victory over Karns City on Tuesday evening.
“To say this was a huge win would be a big understatement,” said C-L head coach Gus Simpson. “Karns City has a really good team, and their coach (Steve Andreassi) does a really nice job. You can’t tell much difference from his first five to his second five. In the past, in those situations against Karns City, if we’d miss those free throws they would have buried a three or something, but tonight we played tough on the defensive end, so I’m really proud of our girls.”
(Above, Frances Milliron led Clarion-Limestone with 16 points/photo by Dave Cyphert of ProPoint Media Photography)
Milliron finished with 16 points and six rebounds. Kendall Dunn added 14 points and eight boards while Lexi Coull chipped in with 10 points and seven steals.
“We didn’t really create a lot of turnovers tonight, but we were disruptive enough to keep them out of getting into an offensive flow,” said Simpson. “They were getting shots from the perimeter because we were doing a nice job on the inside. I’m proud of our defensive effort overall.”
Emma Johns scored 20 points to lead the Lady Gremlins.
In a back-and-forth opening quarter, C-L held the largest lead of three points at 13-10. Karns City rallied and knotted the score at 14-14 after one.
Milliron scored seven and Dunn four for the Lions. Johns scored 10 of the 14 for Karns City.
C-L (6-2 overall) held an 11-9 scoring edge in the second quarter to take a 25-23 halftime lead.
Coull scored six of her total in the frame.
The third quarter would become another low scoring frame with the Lions holding a 9-7 edge to increase their lead to four at 34-30 after three.
C-L would open their largest lead of eight points at 41-33 following a pair of free throws by Coull with 6:06 remaining.
A 7-3 scoring edge by Karns City cut the lead to four at 44-40 with 54 seconds left when Johns drove the lane for a basket.
After a pair of C-L missed free throws with 33 seconds left, Johns would once again drive the lane to cut the lead to 44-42 with 23 seconds left.
After two more missed free throws by C-L with 16 seconds left, the Gremlins would turn the ball over with six seconds left. Milliron was fouled with four seconds left and sank both free throws. The Lions would then steal the inbounds pass to run out the clock to seal the win.
“We had Frances in foul trouble tonight and she and Kendall were kind of sucking wind near the end of the third, so we were using our bench quite a bit tonight,” said Simpson. “We had Jenna Dunn in there for Frances and she gave us some big minutes. We also had Grace Shick give us some solid minutes, so those girls don’t get a lot of credit because they don’t show up on the stat sheet, but those minutes are very important to this team.”
