Decatur Girls Lose to St. Pius in Championship

For the second straight night Decatur's girls had an sluggish beginning, falling behind St. Pius X 14-1 after one quarter.

But unlike the earlier game, when they came back for an emotional one-point win over Woodward, Friday didn't follow the same story line. In fact they never did get back in the game as second-ranked Pius roared to 51-35 win the Region 6-AAA championship.

In the boys consolation game, Decatur stunned sixth-ranked Cedar Grove 46-31. Cedar Grove had beaten the Bulldogs by 20 and 25 points during the regular season. 

Both Decatur teams will advance to next week's state tournament and play a team out of Region 7.

As a two seed the girls will host a first round game while the third-seeded boys will travel to Region 7's second seed. Region 7 will play its championships and consolations on Saturday. 

The Decatur girls were squashed by what coach Bill Roberts called "a point zone, where they always keep one player on the ball and the other four play matchup. To loosen that up you have to hit some threes."

Decatur didn't, making only 2 of 19 three pointers and overall shooting 12 of 52 from the floor for 23 percent. Decatur star Jordan Dillard, who made first team all-region, was held to 13 points total on 5 of 15 shooting. 

Pius spent almost the entire game maintaining and finally stretching its lead, with a margin as large as 23 (47-24) with 3:50 left in the game. 

Pius was led by its spectacular guard combination of Asia Durr -- region player of the  year -- and first team all-region performer Jasmine Carter.

Durr who USA Today ranks the best sophomore player in the country scored a modest 13 points (she averages 20.3 on 52 percent shooting and leads the team in rebounding at 7.0) but delivered a number of remarkable sleight-of-hand passes, several of which her teammates never saw coming. 

She also hit a jumper off one foot, 10 feet behind midcourt, to end the first half. 

Carter, a junior, who averages 15.5 points on 48 percent shooting scored a game-high 24.

"I've never seen a better high school guard combination  in my life," Roberts said.

Meantime, Decatur's boys had their finest hour, not only for this season, but in the three years Charlie Copp's been head coach. 

"It's taken some time for some of the guys to mature," Copp said Friday. "But this week we've seen some of that maturing before our very eyes."

Indeed, the Decatur team that showed up for this week's regional tournament bears almost no resemblance to the regular-season incarnation. 

That Decatur team went 0-8 against the region's top four teams, losing by an average 15.7 points per game. But this week Decatur beat Blessed Trinity (to which it lost by 12 and 15 points), lost by only four to first seed Woodward (which beat Decatur by nine and 20 in the regular season) and finally the masterpiece against Cedar Grove.  

Cedar Grove forged ahead 19-14 with 1:49 left in the first half and, once again, looked like it was going to leave Decatur begging for mercy from its full-court pressure. 

"That was the big adjustment we made all week," Copp said. "This is a pressing region, and we're handling pressure better.

The Bulldogs are also guarding better. Switching to a 1-3-1 zone late in the first half, Cedar Grove seemed genuinely  puzzled, and even more so when Decatur alternated between zone and man-to-man for most of the second half. 

But the biggest sequence of the game came in those final two minutes of the first half when Murad Dillard hit a three with 1:20 left, scored on a slashing drive with 1:05 left, then hit another three with 17 seconds left to give Decatur a 22-19 halftime lead.

Murad, who started nearly every game the last two seasons, came off the bench during the tournament scoring 12, 17 and, on Friday a game-high 16 points.  

After his three closed the half Decatur never looked back, outscoring Cedar Grove 32-12 over the last 17:20. The aggressive, exuberant bunch Decatur had seen during the season was completely drained by game's end.

A perturbed coach James Martin told his team after the game,  "Get something eat 'cause we're practicing when we get back to school."

Decatur opened the second half with a thunderous dunk off a baseline line drive from Cordele Jackson, an exclamation mark for Decatur's new-found moxie. Jackson finished with 12 points, 10 rebounds and four assists.

Junior Noah Fisher, making his first career starts during the tournament added seven rebounds. 

Decatur, which had a season's-high eight three pointers Thursday was even better Friday with four players making 9 of 22 threes. Overall the Bulldogs shot a respectable 17 of 46 from the field