WARDSVILLE -- Alli Robertson did it all for Fatima.
Robertson scored a game-high 18 points, brought down a game-high 13 rebounds, dished out a game-high seven assists, blocked a game-high two shots and tipped away a steal to help lead the Lady Comets to a 54-46 win Thursday against the Owensville Dutchgirls in the semifinals of the Class 4 District 10 Tournament.
“I don’t think she gets enough credit for who we are and what we do,” Fatima coach Matt Baker said. “This team, there’s a bunch of kids who score 10, 12 points a game and if she wanted to, if we wanted to, we could probably force her the ball and get her as many points as she can muster. … It seemed like she got every single rebound. The help defense, she hit some big shots. We run everything through her and she shares it so unselfishly and you couldn’t blame her if she didn’t. But she does and it makes us go.”
Gallery: Class 4 District 10 Girls Basketball -- Fatima vs. Owensville
The No. 3 seed Lady Comets (21-7) move on to Saturday’s championship game against the No. 4 seed Eldon Lady Mustangs with tipoff at Blair Oaks High School set for 3 p.m. Eldon beat top-seeded Blair Oaks 57-28 in Thursday’s first semifinal game.
“I’m excited, it’s gonna be fun,” Robertson said of Saturday’s matchup. “Our fans always bring the energy, so it’s gonna be fun.”
The No. 2 seed Dutchgirls end the season with a record of 18-9.
Fatima opened the game hot, shooting 7-of-9 overall and 4-of-4 from 3 -- including two 3s from Kaitlyn Plassmeyer and the first of four for Emma Bower -- to jump out to a 21-10 lead at the end of the first quarter.
But the shooting went cold for the Lady Comets in the second, with Fatima going scoreless for more than six minutes, as Owensville charged back to take a 24-23 lead after Audrey Quilacio grabbed a defensive rebound and went coast-to-coast for a layup with 27 seconds remaining. They were two of Quilacio’s 11 points.
Fatima was able to go into the break ahead though after Robertson tossed an assist to Bower for a 3 from the right corner as time expired to put the Lady Comets up 26-24 at the break.
“Their defense, they get up the line and make it tough entering the offense,” Baker said. “Early on, we just snapped and moved and had really clean drives. Then we kind of got out of sync, dribbled the ball too much and a lot of that was them playing great defense.”
The game went back and forth in the third, with the teams staying within five points of each other and tying at 30. Owensville was able to take its biggest lead of the night at 39-35 after an Emma Daniels 3 from the right wing, three of her 18 points, and an Ella Gehlert layup off one of Emma Daniels’ team-high five assists with 1:11 left.
But Robertson showed up big again, using a Plassmeyer assist for a right-wing 3 as time expired to cut the Dutchgirls’ lead to 39-38 heading to the fourth.
Then Robertson really got going.
Owensville extended to a 42-38 lead after a Quilacio 3, then Robertson hit a short jumper to start a traditional three-point play to cut the lead to 42-41.
Camryn Caldwell drove for a layup for Owensville, then Robertson connected on a putback with 6:18 left to get the Lady Comets within 44-43. The putback would start a 12-0 Lady Comet run.
“It was one of the first times we were like, ‘It doesn’t matter,’” Robertson said of Owensville taking the late lead. “There’s so much time, we can do this. We were so ready to go for this game. I just knew we got this. We just had to make shots and play defense, I knew we could come back.”
Robertson grabbed the next two defensive rebounds, two of her four fourth-quarter rebounds, then drove from the wing for a layup to put Fatima up 45-44 with 5:12 left. The layup ended a string of 10 consecutive Lady Comet points coming from Robertson.
The senior then tipped a Dutchgirl pass to Plassmeyer, who charged down the court for a layup with 2:42 left before Robertson dished an assist to Bower for a right-wing 3. Bower hit another, this time from the top of the key -- which went off the front of the rim, bounced straight up and came down on the front of the rim again before rolling in -- off a Plassmeyer assist to put the Lady Comets up 53-44 with 1:22 left. Ellie Brune hit a free throw to set Fatima at its final score of 54.
“I’d be lying if I said I thought it was a good shot,” Robertson said of Bower’s final 3. “But that’s a senior in a big moment. She had just made one, so I guess she felt like it was going to go in and it did.”
Caldwell hit a baseline jumper with :35.9 left to end a more-than six-minute scoreless streak for Owensville, but the Dutchgirls were unable to cut the deficit any closer.
“We were using Alli as big-time help on any drive,” Baker said. “We were faceguarding (Caldwell) because we knew she could shoot and we didn’t want to give up anything to her. Doing our best to keep the Daniels girls funneled and helping whoever else was on the floor.”
Fatima connected on 20-of-40 (50 percent) of its overall shots, 9-of-17 (52.9 percent) from 3 and 5-of-7 (71.4 percent) at the free-throw line, led by Robertson’s 6-for-11 day overall and Bower’s 4-for-7 day from 3.
Bower ended with 14 points, while Plassmeyer had nine points, six rebounds and three assists.
“I think that was probably exciting to watch, it was a little nerve wracking for me,” Baker said. “Just a good high school basketball game. Owensville is really good, they beat us by double digits at our place, so we knew it would be tough coming in. We switched up our defense completely tonight, we never play man. That might of bought us a few possessions here or there early on. We quit turning the ball over in the fourth quarter, that made the difference.”