INDIANAPOLIS — Marquette freshman Marissa Pleasant’s warmup before the Class 1A state championship game on Saturday was “regular,” she said.
But once the game began, the 5-foot-7 guard’s performance was anything but.
“The shot was open, so I took the first one,” Pleasant said. “Then I started knocking them down, so I kept going.”
Pleasant hit three 3-pointers in less than two minutes, propelling the Blazers to a 9-2 lead against Lanesville at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
“I just heard the crowd, too, and that gave me confidence,” she said.
Pleasant finished with 13 points, including all 11 of Marquette’s in the first quarter, but that wasn’t enough as the Eagles pulled out a 51-43 victory.
“It’s not a surprise to any of us,” Marquette coach Katie Collignon said. “That’s just what MP does. It’s a huge lift for us. It settled a lot of nerves across the board to come out here and start like that. We didn’t really go back to her, which is a little disappointing, until late. We have to move the ball a little better and find a shooter when she’s hot. When someone goes 3 for 3 — you ever watch ‘NBA Jam’? I’m like, ‘Heat check, heat check, give her the ball.’ It’s disappointing. We have to find our shooters a little bit more.
“It was a heck of a start for a freshman. I’m not sure there’s another freshman who goes 3 for 3 to start a state finals game. That’s the kind of player she is. She’s confident.”
In what was a back-and-forth game throughout, top-ranked Lanesville (29-1) managed to pull away from Marquette (24-5) in the late stages. Junior center Shelby Allen scored a game-high 20 points for the Eagles, who won back-to-back state titles to match the Blazers’ feat from 2018 and 2019.
Star sophomore guard Laniah Davis led the Blazers with 16 points and 12 rebounds. She needed 14 to reach 1,000 for her career, and she eclipsed that plateau after a scoreless first quarter. Junior forward Livia Balling added 12 points and 12 rebounds.
“We prepared pretty well,” Balling said. “We all were pretty confident. But we just got caught up in the moment and lost our rhythm there in the end. We just have to remember to keep pushing.”
Marquette trailed 27-26 at halftime but moved ahead 33-31 as time expired in the third quarter on a nifty inbound from Pleasant to junior forward Natalie Robinson.
Lanesville, which lost junior guard Hadley Crosier, its leading scorer, to an apparent knee injury on a drive to the basket late in the first quarter, got a 3-pointer from senior forward Emma Davis with 5:05 left in the game to regain the lead for good at 38-35.
Marquette got within one point four times, the last on a Balling basket that made it 44-43 with 1:44 left, but couldn’t get over the top.
Collignon said she hopes this experience will serve as motivation for the Blazers.
“Those drills in practice or those plays in practice that are monotonous and they’re repetitive and they seem like they’re not important, games like this is when you remember that they are,” Collignon said. “It’s the little things. We have 24 turnovers. We have better ballhandlers than that. That should never happen. So maybe a ballhandling drill, we’ll be a little more focused. Or making layups — we missed some easy ones early. Those are the focus points.
“We are young. We talked all postseason long, even though we are young, we’re not talking about next year or being back. But this will sting a bit. I’m hoping when those workouts begin in May — March, April, May — whenever we get rolling again, we remember this moment and what a red medal feels like when we want a blue one. They’re ready to bring it. They know what it takes. They know what it feels like to be here. Our fans, our families, have been great this whole year. It’s so fun to be a part of it. But we wish we were cutting down nets right now, and we thought we had a chance. Use it as fuel. Come back stronger than ever — and have half the amount of turnovers.”
The Blazers started three juniors, a sophomore and a freshman against Lanesville. Their roster includes two seniors who play sparingly.
“Making it this far is an accomplishment, but the biggest accomplishment would’ve been that first place, that blue,” Pleasant said. “We didn’t get it this year, but next year for sure is going to be our year. We can’t get worse. We’re just going to get better.
“I see that big trophy in our future. We have all it takes.”
