By Michael Cignoli (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
FAIR GROVE — Raegan McCowan scored her 1,000th career point en route to a game-high 33, Kori Cromer added 17 and Lebanon used two big runs to secure a 67-46 victory over the hosts in the 41st Annual Fair Grove Girls’ Invitational Basketball Tournament title game on Friday.
McCowan, who holds multiple Division I and Division II scholarship offers, entered the third game of her junior season just 22 points shy of the milestone after leading the Yellowjackets to victories over Logan-Rogersville and Ava earlier in the week.
She reached it at the end of the third quarter, hitting a long two-pointer just seconds before the buzzer to give the Yellowjackets a 17-point advantage that was — at that point — their biggest of the night. She added another 10 as Lebanon pulled away in the fourth quarter.
“I had been shooting for it all night,” said McCowan, who now sits at 1,011. “I didn’t know during the game how many I had, but I did know after I hit it. Everyone went crazy.”
Rightfully so, Lebanon coach Jacky Payne said.
“It’s a great honor to get to 1,000 points,” the coach continued. “A lot of kids never get there. We ran a play at the end of every quarter and I think she scored three of the four times that we ran something. That was a big play for her to do that and 1,000 points means you’ve put in the hours. Raegan works so hard at it in the offseason and just refining her skills and working on her fundamentals. She’s the most deserving kid you’d want to see get 1,000 points.”
Payne said the 5-foot-10 guard currently holds offers from Division I schools Bradley, Illinois State, Stephen F. Austin and “a whole bunch” of Division II teams including Drury, Southwest Baptist University and Pittsburg State, but none of them have seen McCowan’s best work yet.
“Because of her work ethic and practice habits, she’s going to get better,” Payne said. “She’s developing more. Physically, she’s more explosive. She always was explosive, but she’s more explosive. She’s not hit the roof yet on her potential. I see a long way to go for her and she can be a valuable asset to a lot of teams.”
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That includes her current one, as the experienced Yellowjackets opened the game with a 10-0 run against a Fair Grove team that has just one senior on the roster.
Lebanon has seven, plus a bona fide Division I prospect in McCowan.
Fair Grove rallied and pulled within four points late in the second quarter, but late baskets from the SBU-bound Cromer and McCowan helped Lebanon enter the break ahead 27-18.
The second half started much like the first, as the Yellowjackets opened with eight consecutive points to go up 35-18. Fair Grove never got within 11 the rest of the night.
“We talked about having to survive the runs because they are good at turning you over and scoring in bunches,” Fair Grove coach Jenny Talbert said. “Unfortunately we started off not surviving a run to start off the game and then kind of did the same thing to start the second half. They just got the best of us. They’re really good at playing hard, aggressive defense and we didn’t really step up to that challenge tonight.”
The 10-0 and 8-0 runs accounted for almost all of Lebanon’s 21-point margin of victory.
“We had a few spurts here and there, but we could never really string together stops and scores,” Talbert said. “That’s something we preach. Get a stop, get a score and string those possessions together. We just really could never get any sort of rhythm there. We really struggled offensively. They took us out of running anything that we wanted to run and that’s just a tribute to their defense. They did a really good job.”
Kameron Green (13 points), Allison Findley (12) and Brooke Daniels (10) all scored in double-figures for Fair Grove, which upset top-seeded West Plains in the semifinals.
“It’s one of the premier tournaments at the start of the season,” Talbert said. “Getting two wins in this tournament is huge. We were pleased that we got that win against West Plains and we got to play in the finals. I feel like we learned a lot. This was a great experience for a lot of my young kids.”
The Yellowjackets improved to 3-0 and hope the title will help them get a favorable seed in the Pink & White Tournament, which should release its brackets on Tuesday.
For now, though, they’re more than happy to celebrate the way this tournament ended.
“It gives us a lot of confidence. … This is the first time we’ve won this tournament in a long time,” McCowan said. “It really means a lot to us.”
