RENSSELAER -- For three quarters Saturday in the first semifinal of the Class 3A Rensselaer Regional, the Griffith girls basketball team played toe to toe with Plymouth, the defending state champs.

That's how bad things got for the Panthers in the second quarter of their season-ending 46-37 loss.

Trailing 10-9 after eight minutes, Griffith was outscored 14-1 in the second quarter, forcing the Panthers to play a futile game of catchup the rest of the way. A Lauren Hansen layup with 5:29 remaining in the third quarter was Griffith's first field goal in more than 13 minutes.

"I think we got a little impatient," Griffith coach Tom Golumbeck said. "We tried to force some things, and against a defense like theirs, you really have to be patient and take what they give you. I thought we panicked a little bit."

Known more for their defense than their offense, the Panthers struggled when leading scorer Shanlynn Bias picked up three early fouls and was whistled for her fourth 21 seconds into the second half.

"Dumb mistakes," Bias said. "I shouldn't have done that."

Bias, who scored Griffith's first six points, sat much of the second and third quarters but still finished with a team-high 14 points.

"That hurts us a lot," Golumbeck said. "She's our leading scorer, and she usually guards the best player on the other team."

But Bias' foul trouble was only part of the problem. The Panthers turned it over on five of their first six possessions of the second quarter, fueling a 17-1 Plymouth run that began with Alex Starr's buzzer-beating 3-pointer at the end of the first quarter.

"We really struggled in the second quarter," Golumbeck said. "The things we thought would work against them didn't work as well as we thought they would. We had to make some adjustments and it took us awhile to do that."

Trailing 24-10 at the half, a deficit that swelled to 30-10 with 5:50 remaining in the third, Griffith (16-7) tried to battle back. But Plymouth (20-5) went 11 of 12 from the line in the fourth quarter to seal the win.

For the game, the Pilgrims were 20 of 24 from the line, while the Panthers were 7 of 10. Elizabeth Smith, Plymouth's 6-foot-1 senior center, was 8 of 9 from the line and finished with a game-high 16 points.

"We told our kids to chip away," Golumbeck said. "I thought we did that. (But) at the end we couldn't get some shots to fall. I thought we played much better in the second half than the first half."