Girls Basketball: Lexie Long leads Covington past Miami Valley

There are times when Covington coach Jim Meyer stops basketball practice to ask senior Lexie Long why she passed up an open shot.

After Saturday, Buccaneers practices might go on with fewer interruptions.

Long scored a season-high 21 points – including 10 in the first quarter – as second-seeded Covington outlasted No. 3 Miami Valley 66-52 in the first round of the Division IV sectional tournament at Brookville High School.

“Lexie is a great shooter. The problem is getting Lexie to shoot,” Meyer said. “She’s very reluctant. I’ll stop practice and say, ‘Lexie you were wide open.’ She smiles. Today she took advantage of what they gave her and stuck some big shots for us.”

Equally important as the points Long scored where the ones she helped prevent. Covington played a box-and-one on Miami Valley all-time leading scorer Tia Karras with Long shadowing her.

Karras finished with a season-low 11 points and 12 below her average.

“That’s Lexie. I think Lexie is a super defender,” Meyer said. “She’s just a natural at it. We knew we had to shut Karras down if we were going to have a chance to win.”

With Karras limited, Miami Valley sophomore Liz Bush stepped up with a season-high 29 points. She scored 19 of her team’s first 26 points.

Miami Valley (17-5) led 38-33 late in the third quarter before Covington (18-5) got rolling for good. The Buccs ended the quarter with a 6-2 run, capped by Long’s transition basket with :01 second left. Covington then opened the fourth quarter with a game-ending 23-9 run.

Senior Addison Metz – who stuck around after a boys game last week to put up 100 shots in an effort to break out of a shooting slump – scored all nine of her points in the fourth quarter. Sophomore Sammy Whiteman, who finished with 15, drove the lane and kicked out several assists.

Their contributions, along with Long’s scoring outburst, were key with Covington playing without junior Jordan Crowell and sophomore Lilly Hamilton.

“We took Miami Valley assuming we were going to have all our weapons,” Meyer said. “The kids just believe in themselves. We told them Monday afternoon when we knew Jordan wasn’t going to play it’s next man up.”

“We lost Jordan so I needed to shoot for our team to score some points,” Long said, smiling before adding, “I’ll probably shoot more now.”

Covington advances to play No. 11 Twin Valley South (4-18), which took a first-round bye, at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Brookville.

Saturday’s game was a rare first-round match-up of high seeds. At the sectional tournament draw, Meyer passed when it came his turn to place Covington on the bracket. Miami Valley then selected its spot. With the next selection back to Meyer he put his Buccs up against the Rams.

“We figured we were going to see them somewhere along the line,” Meyer said. “There were other teams we didn’t want to play. Let’s take them now when we have time to prepare for them. It was a huge gamble because they are very good. It could have easily gone the other way.”

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