FITHIAN — The Oakwood Comet girls basketball team has been able to have some early success this season.

After opening up with a loss at home against Heritage last week, the Comets have gone through the competition at the 23rd Annual McDonald’s Comet Classic pretty easily. They did however run into a real test Wednesday night against the Milford Bearcats. The Comets would prevail 47-42.

Oakwood jumped out early and finished the first half with a 10-point lead against Milford, behind all-state senior Amy Martin’s 16 first-half points.

The Comets would then maintain a solid advantage in the second half until Martin went down with an ankle injury late in the third quarter. That gave the aggressive Bearcat defense a chance to fight their way back into the game.

“It’s just as much a mental thing as it is a physical thing out there,” said Milford coach Rod Burgett. “I felt that we executed pretty well at that point.”

Although they would never take the lead from Oakwood, Milford would make it a 2-point game within the last three minutes of the fourth quarter.

Martin would eventually come back into the game to help secure the Comets victory but she says that it wasn’t easy to sit there and watch the lead diminish so quickly but she felt her team mates did a nice job.

“It took a lot for me to come back in,” said Martin. “Our team did a good job keeping the lead during that time.”

Burgett knew what to expect from Martin going into Wednesday’s contest. Martin has averaged over 30 points through the first four games in the Comets schedule, so stopping her was going to be quite a challenge.

“I don’t think you can ever use the word stop when you use Amy Martin’s name in a sentence,” said Burgett.

While Martin did finish the game with 28 points and 11 rebounds, Burgett thought that his team didn’t do an awful job defending her.

“We were trying to contain her and for the most part in the half court we didn’t do too bad of a job.”

The Comets and coach Rick Bough knew what type of game they were going to see from the Bearcats. He says that they are one of the more aggressive teams around.

“This has been a trademark of Rod’s teams for all the year’s I’ve coached against him,” said Bough. “They are going to come out and they are going to play hard for 32 minutes.”

Bough says that his team tends to learn a lot about themselves when they have this matchup.

“You will know you have played a tough basketball game when you leave the floor,” he said.

The win for the Comets means a championship game berth against their tournament rival, the Shiloh Raiders. Bough is well aware of the type of ballgame his team should expect on Friday night.

“Shiloh is very quick and athletic,” said Bough. “They will be looking to create turnovers and will score a lot of points.”

Sophomore Mackenzie Baker finished the game with 12 points to add to the Comets total. Senior Rachel Mulcahey also finished with five assists.

Milford was led in scoring by Jessica Cann with 13.

As for those Shiloh Raiders, they defeated the Chrisman Cardinals in a rematch of last year’s championship game, 46-38.

The two teams scored a total of 11 points in the first quarter of play, but it didn’t take long for the pace to pick up. Shiloh would go from a 3-point first quarter lead to leading the Cardinals 31-18 at halftime. That was all it took for the Raiders to put away Chrisman.

Lauren Bogle led all scorers in that game with 15 for Shiloh. Lindsey Ross added 11. Paige Thevenin led the Cardinals with 14. Brooke Wolfe and Jocelyn Kindred each added 10.

Heritage defeated Georgetown-Ridge Farm 47-21. Heritage’s Lindsey Nickelson led all scorers in that one with 13.

Westville was able to squeak by Hoopeston Area 48-44. The Tigers got 12 points out of Morgan Ritchie. Taylor Ceader, Emilee James, and Kayla Bryant all had 10. Maggie Bartley had 12 and Lindsey Braddock had 10 for the Cornjerkers.

James was also Westville’s leading scorer on Tuesday with 13 points.

The final games for the Comet Classic will be played on Friday at Oakwood High School. Hoopeston Area and Georgetown-Ridge Farm will play at 1 p.m. Blue Ridge and Westville will play at 2:30. Milford and Chrisman will play at 4. The third-place game will be Heritage and Uni High at 5:30. Oakwood and Shiloh will play the championship game at 7.