MADISON TOWNSHIP — Fantasia Hood provided some much needed heat on an otherwise frosty night at Wayne E. Miller Gymnasium.
Madison’s 5-foot-8 senior sharpshooter, Hood connected on five 3-pointers and scored a game-high 22 points as the Rams pulled away from Clear Fork in the second half for a 56-45 Ohio Cardinal Conference win.
Hood heated up as temperatures outside the gym dipped into the teens. Her fourth trey of the night, with just seven seconds remaining in the third quarter, gave the Rams (4-2, 2-1) a 38-32 advantage heading to the fourth. Her final triple of the night came with 7:47 remaining in the fourth quarter and extended Madison’s lead to 41-32.
“Fantasia is a great outside shooter and we let her get open too many times,” Clear Fork coach Heidi Roush said. “We just didn’t execute the way we needed to defensively.
“She hit a big one to end the third and another one to start the fourth and that gave them some separation.”
The Colts (1-3, 0-2) whittled Madison’s lead down to 45-40 on Matti VanOrman’s driving left-handed layup with 4:54 remaining, before the Rams responded with a back-breaking 7-0 run to put it away. Junior Alexis Smith led the spurt, scoring on a driving layup with 4:06 to play to make the score 49-40 in favor of the Rams, then knocking down an 18-footer a minute later to make it 51-40.
“Alexis gave us a spark in the fourth quarter,” Madison coach Brian Carr said. “She does a lot of things well for us.”
So did point guard Molea Thompson. The 5-5 senior spark plug scored 17 points, including 12 in the second half as the Rams pulled away from a 21-21 halftime tie.
“The other night against Wooster Triway she probably had her best game with 18 points and eight or nine assists,” Carr said. “She’s doing an outstanding job of distributing the ball to the other kids.
“That is the job of the point guard. She can score, but she is getting the other kids involved. She has done that the last two games and that is the reason we’re 4-2 right now instead of 2-4.”
Hood and Thompson combined for 39 of Madison’s 56 points.
“These girls have played against each other for years. We know their strengths,” Roush said. “We know Molea is excellent at penetrating into the paint and we just let her do it too many times. She was able to get into the lane whenever she wanted to.”
The Rams also benefitted from the solid interior play of junior Mekaila Grose. The 5-11 center scored nine points and altered several shots in the lane.
“That kid is so athletic it’s unbelievable,” Carr said. “She had nine tonight, but you can almost guarantee she’ll get 13 or 14 points and nine or 10 rebounds. The kid is just unbelievable.”
The Rams connected on 20 or 41 field goals, including 6 of 12 treys. Clear Fork, meanwhile, was just 17 for 38 from the field and 1 of 4 from beyond the arc.
“Normally we play full-court run-and-jump, but we got in some foul trouble tonight and we had some kids missing with sickness,” Carr said. “So we went back and played solid half-court defense and the kids did an outstanding job. We held them to 45 points, which is going to win you a lot of basketball games.”
VanOrman and Morgan Bailey led Clear Fork with 10 points apiece. Erika Farst added nine.
“We are getting a million open looks and we’re just not converting,” Roush said. “Until we start putting the ball in the basket, we’re not going to win games. It’s not rocket science.”
Madison visits Lexington on Saturday, while Clear Fork hosts OCC heavyweight West Holmes, the defending Division II state runner-up.
“Until it starts to hurt, until they start to realize what they are letting slip away, it’s not going to change,” Roush said. “It’s really up to them now. They can either turn around from this and show up tomorrow and have a great practice or it will be the same-old, same-old.
“These girls are capable of getting it turned around.”
Follow Curt Conrad on Twitter @curtjconrad.
