Wildcat Girls Lose In Semi-Final Game By DAVE WIGHAM SOUTH SALT LAKE - How close can a basketball team come to a shot at the state title and miss? Well the Woods Cross girls came as close as anyone possibly could as a last second shot of the Wildcats went astray and they lost in the semi-finals of the 3A championships 37-36 to an inspired Bear River club. THE Wildcats picked the worst time in history for them to play one of their worst games of the year. "It says a lot when we play that bad, and they play well, and we still only lose by a single point," said Coach Peele. Woods Cross simply couldn't find the range during this contest, for the night the Cats shot a dismal 12-54 from the floor. "You're not going to win too many ballgames shooting like that," added the Wildcat coach. ' BEAR River took advantage advan-tage of the cold shooting of their opponents in the first quarter and the Bears built up a 9-6 edge. Woods Cross got a little hotter, up to lukewarm, and took a 18-17 lead into the lockers at half. The game see-sawed back and forth during the third period, which ended up in a 27-26 lead for the Bears, and set the stage for a great finishing quarter. DIXIE Woods kept the Bear River club in the game while the Wildcats looked inside to Ann Ross and Carolyn Mar- tineau for their points. Dixie led all scorers in the game with 16, Martineau ended up with 12 and Ross with 9. Bear River had the one point lead with ten seconds to go and were at the foul line. Following the missed attempt the Wildcats raced down the floor and fired up a last second shot which bounced off the rim harmlessly and the Bear River team had the win. THE officiating throughout the game was questionable for both sides as inconsistency inconsis-tency was the main objection. One of the problems was that one of the officials had worked a boys state tournament tour-nament game prior to the girls contest and it was evident that he was tired. Coach Peele is the first to admit ad-mit though that it wasn't the official's fault they lost. One of the problems for the Cats was that their top scorers Michelle Cottle and Cheryl Cleverly, couldn't get the hot hand at all during the game. COACH Peele felt like her girls had done a good job in holding the Wood girl to just 16 points. "In her two previous games she had scored 26 and 24 points, then in the final game she scored 31 so we felt we had done a great job in keeping her to the points she got." With the loss the Cats were knocked out of the championship cham-pionship game and into a battle with Murray for third place. Bear River went on to face Provo in the finals.