“If we could play man-to-man, most of those 3-point shots don’t happen,” Schafer explained. “But we’re playing zone now, plus we were focused on limiting (Shae) Littleford, which I thought we did pretty well. But that left shooters open on the wing, and give them credit, they made their shots.”

The lead fluctuated between 15 and 17 points for much of the second quarter. Two buckets by Frost and a free throw by Hayley Diveley made it 31-15 midway through. But the Lady Trojans got a three and five free throws from Littleford and took a 40-18 advantage to the locker room at halftime.

 “Even though we were down 20, I wasn’t panicking at halftime,” Schafer noted. “I thought we had still had a chance to make a run at them in the second half. But we couldn’t score. Good shooting makes up for a lot of other things and we just didn’t have that.”

After Charleston’s Delaney Meister made a three to open the second half, the Lady Hearts put together a 7-0 scoring run. Taylor Armstrong had three points, plus Diveley and Sawyer Althoff both scored to narrow the gap to 18 points, 43-25. And Effingham had two more opportunities to get even closer, but wasn’t able to connect.

The Lady Trojans responded by closing out the quarter on an 8-0 run to take a 51-25 lead into the final eight minutes.

The shooting stats tell much of the story. The hosts shot 43 percent, connecting on 22-of-51 attempts. The Lady Trojans were 10-of-23 from behind the arc, while the Lady Hearts made just 1-of-14 from long range and 13-of-50 overall, a cold 26 percent.

Charleston, which lost the first two games to Effingham this season, got 19 points from Littleford, 17 from Goetten and 12 from Alycia Triplett.

“Triplett was an obstacle for us defensively,” Schafer said. “She altered a lot of our shots and rebounded very well.

“The thing that bothered me the most was we got out-hustled again tonight,” Schafer added. “That’s the second game in a row that’s happened to us. That’s got to stop.”

Frost was in double figures for EHS, finishing with 10 points. Diveley added eight.

The Lady Hearts dipped to 12-16 overall and 4-7 in the Apollo Conference. They will play Thursday at Lincoln and then close out their regular season with a home game Saturday against Olney.

Effingham will then compete in the Olney Class 3A Regional next week. The Lady Hearts are scheduled to face Mt. Vernon at 7:30 p.m. on Monday. Olney and Charleston will play at 6 p.m. and the winners of those two games will play for the regional championship at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 20.

“We need a bounce-back game to get ready for the regional,” Schafer said. “I think any of the four teams can win that regional. We just need to stay focused, keep working hard and trying to improve.”