Harris girls make early exit from tourney

MANCHESTER -- The season came to an abrupt halt for Harris Middle's Eaglettes after a 28-25 loss to Tullahoma East in opening round action of the Central Tennessee Tournament on Wednesday evening at Coffee County Middle School.

It's the first time since the conference was created that the Eaglettes (8-11) were eliminated in the first round.

"We've always advanced to the semifinals but we were very young and our eighth graders didn't have a lot of experience this time around," Harris coach Mark Potts said. "We did improve in some aspects of the game. A bar has been set for this program and we're not going to lower the bar, we're going to work hard and get back to the level this program is accustomed to playing at."

East jumped out to a 6-0 lead before the Eaglettes battled back to 6-4 at the end of the first quarter.

Taylor Honea pitched in six of her eight points in the second stanza as East posted a 16-10 advantage at the intermission after leading by as much as 11 points.

Ikahia Harper of Harris cut the lead to 20-16 at the end of the third quarter when she scored, was fouled and converted the free throw for the 3-point play.

The Eaglettes clicked into gear in the fourth quarter and had a pair of chances to even the score and send the game into overtime with two good looks from 3-point range.

"As bad as we played early we played much better in the fourth quarter and we didn't give up," Potts said. "We played with more intensity and played with more purpose in the fourth."

Seventh graders TeAnna Edmondson and Tonesha Allison paced Harris with 12 and 10 points respectively.

Kelly Myers added seven tallies for East.

The Eagles play this evening at 5:30.