Girls basketball: Avon hangs tough before falling to Berea-Midpark

AVON — Anyone who walked into Avon's gymnasium Friday night unfamiliar with the team's color schemes would have been hard-pressed to guess which team was flirting with a 20-win season and which was mired well below .500. The Eagles threw everything they could muster at visiting Berea-Midpark, hanging within two points until late in the fourth quarter when the Titans eventually pulled away for 61-53 win in the opening game of a Southwestern Conference girls-boys doubleheader. Avon (6-13, 5-7) fell behind by as many as 13 points in the second quarter but scored six of the final eight points of the half to cut its deficit to nine, 32-23, at the half. "That's a very good team we faced tonight and I keep telling anyone who will listen that we're a pretty good team, too," Avon coach Adam Castrilla said. "People look at records, but to me that doesn't really matter to anyone. We're just excited for what we have left and the tournament." Avon had multiple players play big roles. Senior Audrey Lammers scored her team's first six points. Lammers finished with eight points, along with junior Alaina Pagan, who scored seven points in the second half, when Avon outscored the Titans by a point, 30-29. "We're lucky we have a bunch of kids who, I mean this kindly, are bulldogs," Castrilla said. "They don't stop and our big thing all the time is 'next play,' and how do we handle things when things get tough? All kinds of things that don't just apply to basketball but also to life." Twice in the third quarter, Avon cut the deficit to a point. Alaina Pagan's layup with 3:58 in the quarter made the score 36-35. Less than a minute later, Lammers made two free throws to make it a 38-37 game. Junior Regan Bratten led Berea-Midpark (15-3, 10-1) with 23 points. The Titans have won 10 of their last 11 games and swept the season series from the Eagles. Avon, which has dropped five of its last six, was led by sophomore Ava Mitchell, who finished with 12 points. "She's so fast, she's so strong, she's got a nose for the ball," Castrilla said of Mitchell. "She was a multisport athlete, but once she committed to basketball you could see her hard work really paying off. I'm happy for her because as good as she is as a player she's an even better person and teammate." Pagan's basket with 4:10 to play trimmed the Avon deficit to two, 50-48, but on the next trip down the court Berea-Midpark answered with a 3-pointer from junior Casey Friel to extend the lead back to five. Freshman Chole Collins scored nine points for Avon before fouling out in the closing seconds. Contact Todd Shapiro at (440) 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com.