A tough loss

There’s little doubt Tuesday night’s 49-46 loss at home to North Eugene is going to sting for a while for the Corvallis High girls basketball team.

One reason is the Spartans, who dropped their second straight game after a 3-0 start, won’t get a chance to win again for another 10 days. That’s the next time the Spartans hit the court, on Dec. 21 at home against McNary,

The Spartans looked to back up the No. 10 ranking they were honored with by 5A coaches across the state against a winless North Eugene team.

When McKenzie Redberg’s near three-quarter court shot at the buzzer ending the first half hit nothing but net, the Spartans had a 23-20 lead.

That lead was pushed to 30-21 in the third quarter, and the Spartans seemed destined to break the game open with the way they were playing on defense.

But one possession changed the momentum, and the Spartans could never recover.

North Eugene hit the first of two free throws and grabbed the rebound on the missed second. The Highlanders’ Mackenzie Ficek hit a 3-pointer and was fouled after the shot. On the ensuing inbounds, Ficek canned a three and just like that it was 30-28. Her layup seconds later tied it at 30.

Those weren’t the only threes the Highlanders would hit. Time after time they got open, partly because the Spartans lost track of Ficek, who made them pay. She finished with 22 of her game-high 25 points in the second half. She hit 6 threes.

“There wasn’t a lot we could do,” coach Joe Williamson told the newspaper. “We were defending her pretty well. She took step back threes and those are hard ones to get back to. When we did get back to her, we fouled her because we were running at her. She’s a special player.”

The Spartans were also hurt by foul trouble as both Redberg and point guard Gabe Johnson were saddled with four fouls in the third quarter.

Down the stretch, when the Spartans had been so good the first three games, it was North Eugene coming up with the big shot and the big rebound. And the Highlanders hit their free throws.

Down three with six seconds left, the Spartans worked the ball to Johnson for a game-tying 3-point attempt that hit the rim

Those first three wins have to feel so long ago, and the next game has to feel even longer away for this young team still learning to play together and play a complete game.

“I think we all thought it was going to be easy after halftime when we went up by eight,” Johnson told the paper. “But we can’t think like that and we have got to keep playing.”