The Eagles girls basketball team dropped a pair of hard-fought contests this past week.

The Eagles fell to Hickman 48-39 on Thursday and then fell to state ranked Boonville on Monday by a 68-49 score.

         Gabbie Bruce drives baseline against Hickman

But both games showed that the Eagles were capable of surprising even the best teams in Mid-Missouri.

On Monday, SoBoCo fell behind the Pirates – a team that defeated SoBoCo by 36 earlier in the season – by a 25-14 margin.

However, the sister tandem of Kate and Carrie Ponder brought the Eagles back.

Kate hit a baseline jumper and Carrie had a 3-pointer and a layup to pull the score back to 26-22 Boonville. The Pirates added a 3-pointer at the buzzer to make it 31-24 at halftime.

The Eagles actually took the lead early in the third quarter when they got a pair of baskets by Dani Post, then Kate Ponder got a shot to fall and Carrie followed with another 3-pointer.

But, as coach Tony Phillips observed later, comebacks take a lot out of a team.

“We just ran out of gas, we got tired,” Phillips said. “But we proved we can play with the best of teams.”

~ Read more of this story in today’s Journal ~

By Bruce Wallace