<p>Center Grove’s girls basketball team is hard enough to score upon when you’re at full strength. Without two of your top offensive players in the lineup, the task becomes next to impossible.</p>
<p>Visiting Franklin found that out on Tuesday, when a severe and prolonged scoring drought led to a 54-27 defeat.</p>
<p>"Obviously, they’re a very good team," Grizzly Cubs coach Josh Sabol said, "probably the best defensive team that you will face in the course of a season. I thought in the first half, we were doing some nice things … but then the second half is when it started to get away from us a little bit."</p>
<p>Five points from Kiki Crabtree in the first three minutes got the Grizzly Cubs out to an early lead, but Mary Wilson’s 3-pointer at the 4:46 mark put the Trojans ahead to stay at 6-5. That was the first of five first-half makes from behind the arc for Center Grove.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
<p>A Liv Parramore 3 with 5:48 to go in the half got Franklin back to within a single possession at 16-13, but the home team responded with nine consecutive points — three Ashley Eck baskets and a Claire Rake 3 — to get the margin into double digits.</p>
<p>Up 30-19 at the break, the Trojans opened the half with a pair of buckets by Wilson, and Franklin couldn’t get any closer than a dozen the rest of the way. Center Grove pitched a shutout for more than 10 minutes in the third and fourth quarters, scoring 17 unanswered before Maleigha Jasper’s long jumper with 36 seconds remaining.</p>
<p>Normally more reliant on 3-point shooting, the Trojans managed to extend their lead despite knocking down just one deep ball in the second half.</p>
<p>"We knew Claire was shooting, and so we kept driving to kick it out to her," Eck said. "But after a while they started guarding her more, and so then the lane started to open up for me and Alainna (Frankel) and all the other drivers."</p>
<p>The Grizzly Cubs had a difficult time finding open passing lanes against the Center Grove defense, and points were hard to come by as a result. After Parramore’s second-quarter 3, Kyra Baker was Franklin’s lone source of offense until Jasper’s late make, scoring her team’s only 12 points in the 21-plus minutes in between.</p>
<p>Some of those offensive struggles can be attributed to the opposition, but it certainly didn’t help that the Grizzly Cubs were without senior Abby DeArmitt, their leading scorer so far this season, and injured sophomore Kuryn Brunson, the top returning scorer from a year ago.</p>
<p>"We haven’t had our full team together in a long time," Sabol said. "But I feel like it’s giving other girls opportunities to play, it’s giving other girls opportunities to get experience, and it’s just going to make our depth that much stronger when those two come back."Â </p>
<p>Wilson was the top scorer for a balanced Trojan lineup with 13 points, while Claire Rake added 12, all on 3-pointers in the first half, and five steals.</p>
<p>Eck stuffed the stat sheet to the tune of 10 points, 11 rebounds, five steals and three assists, and Alainna Frankel totaled eight points and four steals.</p>
<p>Baker finished with a game-high 14 for Franklin.</p>
