The Mustangs lost 57-38 at Asheboro (17-7) in the first round of the state 3A playoffs, scoring their fewest points since a 57-26 loss to West Rowan on Dec. 7.

Randy Murphy’s Asheboro team is a solid, hard-working club, but both he and East coach Randy Bingham agreed that it is no world-beater. The Mustangs could have handled the Blue Comets had they played their best, but on this night, they just didn’t have it. They shot the ball like they were wearing mittens.

Brooke Misenheimer led East with 11 points, while Emily Rich scored 10. Lora Williams battled for 11 rebounds.

Kiki Bowden led Asheboro with 16 points, while Centerra Harris grabbed 19 boards.

“It just wasn’t meant to be,” said East’s Nicole Loggins, who closed out her sensational career with a frigid shooting night. “Coach said drive and shoot and we had the shots. But nothing would go in.”

The Western Carolina-bound bomber went 3-for-18, with at least a half-dozen of her attempts rimming out. Her 3-point shots were on line, but consistently came up short. And it wasn’t just Loggins. East’s other deadly outside shooter — Rich — went 5-for-14. East did not make a 3 all night. The Mustangs’ inside players, meanwhile, couldn’t get point-blank layups to go down.

East shot 22 percent for the game from the field and an appalling 12.9 percent in the second half. The Mustangs made only four field goals in 31 second-half tries.

The woeful shooting night came right out of the blue. East had scored at least 58 points in each of its last seven games and had looked good doing it.

“I think our good defense took them out of their offense,” said Murphy. “But we really didn’t know what to expect. We hadn’t seen them. We came in blind. All I knew about them was what I read on the Salisbury Post Web site.”

Murpy had been reading about a hot team — a team that hadn’t been beaten by anyone except West in its last eight games and seemed poised to make a serious playoff run behind seniors Loggins and Misenheimer. But the Mustangs failed to live up to their glowing words on the Web.

“It was the most frustrating night we’ve had,” said Bingham, who finished his first year as as head coach at 18-9. “This was like the way we were playing back in the middle of the year when nothing would go in. I just hate that Asheboro didn’t get to see the real East Rowan.”

Both teams started slowly, with Asheboro managing an 11-10 lead after a quarter despite shooting 5-for-20.

Then East grabbed control early in the second with an 8-1 run sparked by two Loggins layups. When Rich buried a jumper at the 4:56 mark for an 18-12 East lead, all seemed right with the Mustangs’ world.

But things suddenly fell apart. The Comets shredded East’s traps for layups and Harris started getting every rebound. The Comets closed the first half on a 20-4 run and East was clearly in trouble, down 32-22 at the break.

“They just killed us on the boards,” said Bingham. “They were getting three or four shots until they finally scored and we were getting just one shot and missing it. That was the difference more than their defense or our shooting.”

East’s last chance to make a game of it came in the first 4:28 of the second half. Asheboro managed to go scoreless in that span.

Unfortunately for the Mustangs, they didn’t score, either.

When someone finally did connect at the 3:32 mark, it wasn’t Loggins or Rich, but Asheboro’s Bowden on a driving layup. Then the Comets’ Brooke Arnold followed with a fastbreak banker and East was down 14.

“We started cold and the longer poor shooting goes on, the tougher it gets to snap out of it,” said Bingham. “In the third quarter, we started to panic a little.”

East never did snap out, shooting 1-for-11 in the third quarter (Rich made the only basket). It was 38-26 after three, with the teams combining for only 10 third-quarter points.

East never got closer than 11 points in the final quarter and trailed by as many as 22 points at 54-32 with 1:30 remaining.

“About the middle of the fourth quarter, I guess we all knew,” said Rich. “It wasn’t going to be our night.”

“I hated it for all the girls,” said Bingham. “I thought by the end of the year we were as good as anyone in our league and I wanted them to go far in the playoffs. Especially the seniors.”

East loses four seniors. Two of them — Mary Clark Roberts and TiffanyPoole — had good years off the bench. The other two — Loggins and Misenheimer — will likely go down in history as the school’s best ever backcourt combination.

“They leave us with some big shoes to fill,” said Rich. “We’ve depended on them so much for so long.”

Loggins finished her career as the school’s all-time scoring leader with 1,351 points and Misenheimer’s steady stream of assists and press-breaking ability played a huge role in her classmate’s assault on the record books.

Misenheimer left the gym after her final high school game in tears, with a red-eyed Loggins fighting hard to hold back her own. But they didn’t let anyone down. They’ll be remembered far more for four years of excellence than for one tough night a long way from home.

EAST (38) — Loggins 6, Rich 10, Misenheimer 11, Morgan 2, Williams 7, Poole 2, Alexander, Haynes, Ivey, Shaw, Goodnight, Roberts.

ASHEBORO(57) — Harrington 11, K,Bowden 16, Hayes 5, Arnold 11, Harris 11, Tillman 2, S.Bowden 1, Burkett, Cates.

East 10 12 4 12 — 38