Carroll's Girls Are Set For The State Title Game

It’s two minutes the girls’ basketball can’t get back—but two minutes the Patriots can certainly learn from and change when they play defending two-time state PIAA Class AAAA champion Mount Lebanon at 6 p.m. Friday night in the state championship at Penn State’s Bryce Jordan Center.
 
Back on January 15, Carroll held a six-point lead against the defending state champs with two minutes left to play when the Pats suffered a rare shutdown. The lead quickly evaporated and Mount Lebanon eventually went on to win in overtime, 56-54.
 
Carroll played that game without Rachel Pearson and Jen Carney, who were both out with injuries, but the Pats still had their share of chances to win.
 
The Carroll team Mount Lebanon (24-6 overall record) will be facing Friday night could be strikingly different from the team the Blue Devils saw over two months ago.
 
“I think we are,” Pats’ senior Emily Fazzini said. “I think that first game against them gives us confidence in this game. We know what we’re up against and we made mistakes the first time we played them. The kind of mistakes that we aren’t making now. In that game, it was one bad play that led to another, and another.”
 
Carroll (24-5) is looking to win its second state championship in the last three years. In 2009, the Pats took the Class AAA state championship in rather easy fashion, smashing every team that they faced in the state playoffs. This version of the Pats seems to be doing the same. Carroll has beaten its four state playoff opponents by an  average of 27 points a game.
 
What’s more is that the Pats are healthy. Both Pearson and Carney are back, playing major roles for Carroll.
 
“This will mean a lot to me,” said Pearson, a junior. “I’m happy to be getting another chance at the state title, and getting to play [Mount Lebanon] again. And the seniors on this team deserve it, we’ve all worked so hard for this, but I know we all want to do this for the seniors. We want to win this for them.”
 
A big factor for Carroll will be stopping Mount Lebanon’s Madison Cable, a 5-foot-9 guard bound for Notre Dame. She scored a game-high 17 points against the Pats in their first meeting.
 
“We’ll have to be make sure we’re aware of her every time they have the ball,” Fazzini said. “I should know, because I was the one assigned to guard her in the first game. I think there must have been four or five times when I literally had a hand in her face and she still made the shot. We’ll need to know where she is at all times.”
 
Fazzini was on Carroll’s state championship team in 2009. For some reason, she says, she feels strangely calm about this state championship game.
 
“I really don’t know what it is, but I like the way we’re playing right now,” she said, “and we’re all ready to play.”