Rocky Loses to Morton

From Argus

By Dan Tomlin, dtomlin@qconline.com

BLOOMINGTON — The Rock Island High School girls' basketball team found out what it was like to play one of the top teams in the state and realized the hard way that you can't come out sluggish against a good team. The Rocks fell to the Morton Potters 38-30 in the State Farm Holiday Classic, despite playing the Potters basically even after falling behind by double-digits in the first 10 minutes of the game. "They're a good team, but we competed from start to finish," Rock Island coach Thad Hoover said. "I have no complaints about how we played tonight." The Rocks finally woke up after shooting 2-for-9 from the floor in the second quarter, but couldn't get stops against a tough Potters team that opened the season tied with Rock Island for 11th in the state 3A rankings. The most intimidating part of the game was Morton's senior center Sarah Livingston, sister of NBA player Sean Livingston. She dominated the paint, blocking a pair of shots in the first quarter, and ending the game with five blocked shots. "We're not used to playing girls with their kind of size," said Hoover of a Potter starting five that is no shorter than 5-10. "Our big girls had to learn how to play against them, and we had to start getting better looks in transition." When Rock Island was able to run up and down the court, it looked as though the Rocks were the better team. With Morton trying to salt away the game in the fourth quarter, Rock Island forced seven turnovers and had several good looks off them. "We did a much better job in transition in the second half," Hoover said. "Morton got more tired than we were." Surprisingly neither team was able to put together more than a 4-point run after that first 10 minute stretch. Sarita Goldsmith continued her stellar play scoring 10 points and pulling down 8 rebounds, both of those were game-highs. Now the Rocks have the tough tournament turnaround coaches dread. Rocky finished playing around 10:30 on Wednesday night and has to hit the court at 11 a.m. this morning to take on Normal U-High with the winner playing for the fifth place trophy at 4:30 p.m. The loser will play at 5:30 p.m. for seventh place. "It's going to be a challenge to play as hard as we did tonight at 11 tomorrow morning," Hoover said. "But we came here to play good teams and get better and I think we're doing that."