Lady Panthers break even

The first round of basketball games are over for the Alberton Lady Panthers and before too long they’re going to start playing some teams that they saw earlier in the season, which will give them a chance to see how much they’ve improved and a chance to cleanup mistakes they might have made in the first game.

But last week, the girls had a game against Seeley, which they lost 58-30, and another game against Hot Springs, which they won 37-30.

Against Seeley, the first half, and in particular the second quarter may have cost them the game. They were outscored 6-14 in the first and 2-15 in the second.

“The second quarter was bad,” said Jim Baldwin, coach. “We missed a bunch of free throws and some layups.”

Baldwin said that they talked afterwards about teams that they should be able to compete against. He said that he felt like the score necessarily didn’t reflect the real game.

“But we saw that there were some things that needed to be worked on and we’ll keep those things in mind when we play them again,” Baldwin said.

Baldwin noted that they didn’t execute their offense very good and he said that after shooting they weren’t getting down the court.

“We weren’t hustling and (Seeley) strives on pressing team,” he said.

Against Seeley, Andi Clark scored four, Dani Hanley scored eight, Jenna Rausch led with 12 points, Mariah Turnbull chipped in two and Kayla Webb added four.

It was a different game against Hot Springs on Saturday night. The seven point win reflects how tight the game was. Early in the first quarter, the teams were tied 2-2. Andi Clark added the first two points from free throws and the girls jumped to a two point lead. From there, the score didn’t fluctuate much. Alberton led 7-5 going into the second quarter, but the game quickly became tied again 7-7. Hot Springs stole the lead by a few points halfway through, but the Lady Panthers rebounded and moved ahead again, leading by two going in to halftime, 19-17.

It was the third quarter that the girls ran away from Hot Springs outscoring them, 13-8. Clark ended up shooting 11 of 18 free throws from the foul line. Clark ended up scoring 17 points for the team. Hanley added a couple of three-point shots from the outside, scoring 10 points overall for the game. Rausch nabbed 12 rebounds for the girls to help to their victory.

“They did an excellent job shutting down their big person (Meghan Massingale),” Baldwin said. “Defensively, we put a chaser on her and kept her pretty contained the whole game.”

Baldwin was also impressed because the freshman he put into the game when the team got into some foul trouble did a good job of stepping up to play, which is something they have to do because of numbers.

Baldwin said that he felt the girls did a good job moving the ball on offense and had some nice shots. He said that the girls broke through the press and did a good job handling it.

The girls will have to be able to handle the press this week when they play Superior on Thursday.

“I’m expecting an up tempo game,” Baldwin said. “I know that Jeff (Schultz) has done an excellent job with the team.”

On Friday, the girls have a conference game with Lincoln and Baldwin believes it will be a good test.

“We’ve been seeing improvement every game and we’re excited about that,” Baldwin said. “The girls continue to have a great attitude.”