High School Basketball: Liberty Girls Advance in Regional Playoffs

The girls opened play in Class 2A West play with a 55-29 win over Francis Scott Key while the Lion boys fell to Middletown 65-50.

The girls were also in action Friday night as they downed Winters Mill 57-37 in regional action. The Cavaliers travel to Thurmont Monday night to face third seeded Catoctin at 7 p.m.

The girls advance to play rival Century Monday night at 7 p.m. The Lions are the eighth seed in the region, while the Knights received a first round bye as the top seed. Century downed the Lions twice during the regular season.

The girls game was close for the first four minutes as Liberty’s Haley Price sunk two free throws with 4:44 left in the first quarter to tie the game at 6-6. The rest of the quarter belonged to the Lions as they scored the next nine points for a 15-6 lead going into the second eight minutes of play. 

"They came out strong the first half," said Liberty coach Jessica Morgan.

The Eagles playing without Paula Nicholson were down 28-13 at the half.

The Lions controlled the second half and nine of the 13 Liberty players scored in the game.

The Lions were led by Kelly McCormick with 12 points followed by Hailey Marlatt with 12; Christine Johnson 10; Anna Hresko had six; while Molly Barcikowski and Sarah Johnston had four each and Price and Elisabeth Wise had two each and Krissy Smith had one point.

"We did a good job of passing the ball around. We struggled all season with getting some outside shots, but we did our fair share and we didn’t force it inside. We took some good outside shots and kind of passed it around. It was good," Morgan said. 

Jordan Fine topped the Eagles with 16 points with Lilly Lawler adding six, Megan Wolfe four, Melinda Kreimer had two and Kala Arnold had one.

The Lions are now 8-15 on the season, while Key’s season ended with a 7-16 record.

The Liberty boys ran into a good shooting team, as Middletown jumped out to a 19-9 lead after the first quarter. Middletown’s Zach Fontenot had 13 points and Mike Pritts had six  in the quarter. Nine of Fontenot’s points came on three shots beyond the three point line.

"Their not tall, they are just good shooters. We knew coming in they were good three-point shooters and that was the game plan to chase the three-point shooters. We just didn’t chase them enough," said Liberty coach Jay Seaborg.

The Knights put the game away in the second quarter as Liberty didn’t score until 2:08 was left in the half on a bucket by Shane Sweeney. The Knights went into the locker room at halftime up 34-19.

Justin Murphy and Kyle Farson were in double figures for the Lions, who ended their season at 3-21. Murphy scored 16 points while Farson had 11. Also scoring for the Lions was Colin Orf with eight, Sweeney with four, while Bobby Wise, Chad Barcikowski and Rase Burke each had three points and JC Farley added two.

Fontenot finished with 18 points and Pritts with 15. Other Knights scoring was Connor Mills with 11, Logan Beckner with seven, Ethan Winn had six, John Remsberg had four, Tyler Kisner had two and Ken Bartlett and Ali Aziz each had one point.

Middletown now 11-12 on the season travels to third seeded Oakdale Tuesday night.