Eudora ? An icy first-quarter shooting effort Saturday for the Veritas Christian girls basketball team put the Eagles in a hole from which they couldn’t climb out.

Veritas went 0-of-18 from the floor in the first quarter and fell to Topeka Cornerstone, 47-42, despite a fourth-quarter rally.

“We had a real tough shooting start to this game,” Veritas coach Kevin Shelton said after his team scored three first-quarter points, which all came on free throws. “We couldn’t shoot the ball well in the first half, and we dug ourselves a hole, and we just ran out of clock at the end of the game.”

The first Veritas field goal came in the opening minute of the second quarter when freshman Meaghan Holmes hit a jumper in the lane to make it 14-5, but points still were hard to find for Veritas (8-4) until the fourth quarter. Cornerstone maintained about a 15-point cushion from the second quarter until Veritas started knocking down shots in the fourth, when it outscored Cornerstone 21-10.

A jumper from senior Marteka Carlton, who scored a game-high 18 and had nine rebounds, with 46.9 seconds remaining cut the deficit to single digits. Melissa Hardee and Taelyr Shelton also scored in the final minute to get Veritas within five.

“In the second half when we had to start applying pressure and we did a good job. We got some turnovers, caused them some problems, it was just too late,” Shelton said. “I told (the players) that type of effort is what makes a winning team. You have to have effort like that; what we need is to have that for four quarters.”

Holmes left the game with a knee injury with 4:56 remaining in the fourth quarter, but scored four points and grabbed 14 rebounds. Kirsten Bennett came off the bench and scored seven points in the second quarter.