Thomas P. Corwin, Special to the Times
Saturday, February 19, 2011
NAPLES — Entering Saturday night's Class 2A region final, Indian Rocks Christian had been undefeated on the road. Community School of Naples made sure that road came to a bitter end.
Michelle Woods scored 16 points and the Seahawks connected on seven 3-pointers to win 48-33. The Seahawks (24-5) earned their third straight trip to the state final four.
"We thought we were ready to play coming into the game," Indian Rocks coach Phil Farver said. "But we turned the ball over way too much. We had a lot of back-door passes that were intercepted or went out of bounds. It was very frustrating in that we only scored half of what our season average in points has been."
Tori Trador and Rachel Burnett each had 10 points for the Golden Eagles (28-4).
"We did a fairly good job on defense," Farver said. "But the transition game hurt us a lot. It gave Community School a lot of easy layups."
The key to the game came early in the fourth when Community School put together an 11-2 run. The Golden Eagles trailed the whole game, but never by more than seven until the final quarter. IRC had averaged 80 points a game in its previous two wins.
"Our girls did a phenomenal job on defense," Community School coach Mitch Woods said. "Indian Rocks has three 1,000-point scorers. We've worked hard on defense all year, and we handled defense on perimeter shooting very well."
Indian Rocks made only 4-of-18 shots from 3-point range.
CSN led 23-17 at halftime. The Golden Eagles pulled within 26-22, but 10 minutes later CSN was ahead by 12 with 6:18 left.