Needles did a terrific job both offensively and defensively. She asked for the defensive assignment of guarding Speed and did a terrific job of pressuring the ball but not giving up dribble penetration. She forced Speed to take long jumpers off the dribble. Unfortunately for Needles and ThunderRidge, Speed was dialed in from long range and hit enough of those jumpers to overcome the ten point fourth quarter surge Needles had.

That big fourth quarter and overall dynamite game may have been a large reason the next day against Piedmont Needles found herself face-guarded by a taller player. In this case Piedmont deployed the defensive-minded Andrea Chenier who is long and athletic and at least two inches taller than Needles. Open looks were fewer and much further between. This challenged Needles to get her teammates more involved which required an adjustment period. She got some open looks at three and her super-quick release got some good shots up but she was off just a smidgen.

“I get face guarded a lot, over the summer I did too,” Needles, who plays her summer ball with the Mile High Magic, said. “I don’t know, today was a lot tougher for me and I wasn’t expecting them to face guard me as much because Rachel (Messer) is the (known) outside shooter so I thought they’d do that to her. It was really hard for me; I just tried to get everyone else open.”

“They did a good job with Carlie, they did a good job with both of my guards,” ThunderRidge coach Bill Bradley said after the Piedmont game. “(Messer) got some easy, open looks which she didn’t get a lot of yesterday. But Carlie’s the one. Number four did a really good job with Carlie. You’ve got to give her some credit, she did a great job defensively."

Messer did get some good looks with the defensive attention focused on Needles but the shots were not falling at the same rate and Morris had a simply terrific game for Piedmont. Morris’s shiftiness and length allowed her to get into the lane and taught Needles a valuable lesson in playing two standout guards back-to-back days.

“I become smarter,” Needles said. “Especially in situations like that when I have good point guards to play against. (I) just know what I have to, play sound and not overplay things and get beat.”

Off the ball Needles works hard as well but with skilled and athletic players there to capitalize on any mistakes the lessons continued.