Staff photo / Dan Hiner Canfield’s Jenna Triveri, puts up a floater while Streetsboro’s Raegan Hendon attempts to draw a charge during Wednesday’s Division IV regional semifinal at Canton Memorial Fieldhouse.

CANTON — There are just some nights when things don’t go a team’s way.

For the Canfield girls basketball team, it was Wednesday. And unfortunately for the Cardinals, it was in a Division IV regional semifinal.

Canfield fell 51-45 to Streetsboro at Canton Memorial Fieldhouse, bringing an end to the Cardinals’ season.

“It’s a tough one to swallow,” Canfield head coach Matt Reel said. “I thought it was two pretty even teams going at it. I thought at times we had some great looks at the basket and didn’t convert. We had a stretch where we turned the ball over too much and gave them some easy buckets.”

Canfield (23-3) took its first lead with just over 90 seconds to play in the first. Jenna Triveri sank a floater to put the Cardinals ahead 11-10.

The Rockets (22-3) made a couple more plays and took a 16-13 lead into the second quarter.

The second quarter wasn’t kind to the Cardinals.

They went the first four minutes of the period without scoring, and they had some high-percentage chances. They just couldn’t get the ball through the hoop, and the Rockets jumped passing lanes for most of the first half to create some easy baskets.

Triveri’s layup with 3:23 left in the second was the Cardinals’ first basket of the quarter, and it cut the deficit to 22-15.

But the Cardinals found their groove in the last few minutes of the half.

They started to put pressure on the Rockets, and that allowed them to only trail 26-22 at halftime. Defense took over in the third for both teams, but the Cardinals matched the Rockets point for point. That set up a fourth quarter where the Cardinals only were behind 35-31.

However, the turnover bug hit the Cardinals again in the fourth quarter. They struggled to maintain possession, and when they got into their sets, missed some layups down the stretch.

Naomi Benson also controlled the offensive glass for the Rockets. There were moments in the fourth quarter where the Cardinals got the stop they needed, but Benson would crash the glass and get a put-back.

“Naomi came through at 6-foot-3. That was a huge part of the game,” Reel said. “When you get her into those situations where it’s one-on-one with anyone that you have, she’s generally gonna win. And we tried to surround her with more people, and sometimes that still don’t work.”

Carly Fleming stole the ball and scored with 10 seconds left for Canfield, but it only cut the lead to 49-45.

Raegen Hendon put the game away with a free throw and steal on Canfield’s next possession.

“I thought if we got two or four ahead, maybe they press a little bit, but we were never able to do that,” Reel said. “It’s just tough because I love this team, and we couldn’t ask the girls to give us any more than they already did.”

Olivia Johnson-Wilson, Sydney Abbuhl and Benson each scored 11 points for the Rockets.

Triveri led all scorers with 16 points, and Fleming added 11 to round out the Cardinals’ double-digit scorers. Marina Koenig also added seven points.

It was the high school finale for two seniors, Aleen Bracat and Koenig.

“They’re two of the better senior leaders we’ve had here, and the rest of the group followed them,” Reel said.

Thoughts were mixed for Reel when bringing up the Cardinals’ future. On one hand, they return all but two seniors, but he also knows that there’s a lot that goes into making deep tournament runs.

“What do they want next year to be? We’re gonna celebrate this year after the sting of losing wears off a little bit,” Reel said. “We like our group coming back. I think what’s going to determine (future success) will be that they got a taste of it. Hopefully we stay healthy enough and a lot of things go your way, and maybe we have a chance to get back here next year.”