LAKELAND – For the Cardinal Mooney girls basketball team, the fifth time was the charm.
Losers in the last four Class 3A state title games, the Cougars made amends on Saturday in the 3A championship game. Behind balanced scoring, Mooney defeated Jacksonville Bolles, 64-54, at the RP Funding Center.
After the final horn, Mooney players celebrated the victory, but it was muted, as though the triumph was tinged with relief.
“It was a little bit of both,” said senior Sy’monique Simon, who will play at Harvard. “It was out of relief, but it was also out of hard work. We’ve been in the gym at 6 a.m. working out. We’ve been doing it all. And this was the year.”
During the medal presentation, several Mooney players shed tears, more than a few over Simon, who fell over backward in the third period, dislocating her elbow.
But in the game’s final minute, with the game decided, Simon re-entered the contest, her arm and elbow wrapped. “I wanted to be on the court,” she said. “We’ve been here four times, and I wanted to finish it on the court.”
Before she went down, Simon scored 11 points and played the kind of defense that helped Mooney build a 53-40 lead entering the fourth quarter. Not surprisingly, Bolles made a run in the fourth quarter with Simon out of the game.
Powered by the non-stop energy of guard Evie Freeman (21 points), the Bulldogs got as close as 57-52 on a free throw by Presley Norman (15 points) with three minutes, six seconds left. But that was as close as Bolles got, as Madi Mignery (19 points, 11 rebounds) converted a basket in the paint, followed by two free throws.
“That’s part of it,” Mooney coach Marlon Williams said of the Bulldogs’ fourth-quarter surge. “It’s hard, baby. It’s tough. We wanted to have non-stop energy the whole game. Play together, play hard. No matter what happened, we were going out with a fight, and that’s what they did. That’s what I’m proud of.”
For Bolles, despite the fourth-quarter run, its first-ever title appearance was lost in the second period, when the Bulldogs scored just four points. During that eight minutes, the Cougars stretched their lead from 17-15 to 34-19.
For the game, the Cougars shot 23-of-53 from the field, and 5-of-17 from 3-point range, compared to 19-of-56 for Bolles, and 5-of-20 converting treys. And almost in quiet fashion, future University of Cincinnati Bearcat Kali Barrett had a team-high 20 points, and tied Mignery with 11 rebounds.
“Senior leadership,” Williams said. “Kali was talking to her teammates on the court. And as we go, we can build from that.”
Said Barrett, “We all tried to work together. When the shots weren’t going in, you just had to do something to help the team. Get rebounds, get steals, and that’s what everybody did.”
Williams will lose Simon and Barrett and Riley Martin, but returns Mignery and Talia Busser.
“I got other girls who are coming in,” he said, “and we’re going to keep trying to build and build.”
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Cardinal Mooney girls basketball team beats Bolles for first state title
