“You get yourself down against good teams it’s tough to come back,” Badin coach Tom Sunderman said. “Today was a day where we played a little tight. They played like they’d been there before.”
Carroll (20-4) won its third straight regional title and will play in the state semifinals at 11 a.m. Friday at the University of Dayton Arena. The Patriots will face Napoleon (24-1), which is in the final four for the second straight year. Neither team got to play at state last year because the tournament was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Badin (18-10), which was trying to make it to state for the first time since 2004, started the season 7-8 before winning 11 of 12 entering Friday’s game.
“I give a lot of credit to Badin and Coach Sunderman,” Carroll coach Cecelia Grosselin said. “He did a great job preparing his team. They’ve been getting better all year. We knew if we had to play them, it was going to be a tough game. They didn’t disappoint.”
Two Badin starters missed significant time this season. Lizzie Meyer made it back from an injury for the final two weeks of the regular season. Maddie Thompson missed several games because of a concussion.
“Nobody gave us the opportunity to be here,” Sunderman said. “We knew what we were missing, we knew that we had heart, we had girls that were out, a lot of things going on. And if we brought it all together, we could make this run.”
Carroll turned a two-point halftime lead into a 10-point lead after three quarters. Mahya Lindesmith had kept the Rams in the game with 12 of her 17 points in the first half. Jada Pohlen scored 12 of her 14 in the second half to lead the comeback.
“We talked at the beginning of the fourth quarter and in the first timeout of the fourth quarter to get back to what we do, drive and kick and shoot the ball with confidence,” Sunderman said. “And that’s what happened. We started getting to the rim. They didn’t know whether to guard the drive, didn’t know whether to guard the three. A couple balls bounced our way.”
The Rams fell behind by 13 because of two long scoring droughts. They scored one point in the first six minutes of the game and one point in the first six minutes of the third quarter.
“The biggest thing we talked about as coaches is we need to be able to score today,” Sunderman said. “You’ve got to be able to score against Carroll. They keep the game low-scoring, keep it close, get to the fourth quarter and that’s when they usually capitalize on you. We just got ourselves too far in a hole.”
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