Chris Tilton's Sports Archive


Return to: Sports Homepage

Return to: Sports Archive Home

0110dixps_story

 

Hounds Try to Rally Against Arrows
J. C. Tilton

The Greyhound girls basketball team got off to a slow start again the Shawnee Arrows. The Arrows had been on losing streak, but their half court zone defense combined with cold shooting from the Hounds had them up at the half. Dixie would try to rally, but would they be able to close the gap in the last minutes of the game?

The first quarter leaned to the Arrows as they opened a 5 point lead. But the damage occurred in the second quarter as the Arrows limited Dixie to just 3 points and reeled off 11 points of their own. This despite having Arrow point guard Gwen Davis pick up her 3rd foul and having to ride the bench in this quarter. Jessi Dunn who has been the go to person for the Hounds was scoreless in the first half, instead Randi Salyer scored Dixie's first half points. Defensively the Hounds tried both a man to man and a zone to slow down the Arrows. They did slow down the pace of the Arrow scoring in the last part of the quarter, but went into the locker room down 22-9. Salyer would need some help from her teammates to make up the deficit.

And the third quarter the Hounds started to come back. Dunn found her shot and hit paydirt early in the quarter and Kari Thomas tossed in a bucket and now Dixie was shrinking the Shawnee lead. Gwen Davis picked up her 4th foul, but in the last half of the quarter Dixie's Amanda York picked up her 3rd foul. So both teams had key players in foul trouble. Dixie mixed in the press with some man to man defense and were able to close the gap to just 5 points thanks to Sara Kelhoffer hitting a pair of free throws before the end of the quarter.

In the 4th period, the game became a free throw contest. Both teams started the quarter with treys - Randi Salyers hitting for Dixie. But Erin Davis picked up her 3rd and 4th fouls, York got her 4th and suddenly both teams had 9 fouls and next double bonus. Dixie was doing a slightly better job of hitting their foul shots early and closed the gap. Randi Bargo hit from the field, then on the next possession was fouled and nailed both tosses to pull Dixie within 1 - 37-36 at the 2:23 mark. As the game wound down Shawnee maintained a narrow margin. This despite Erin Davis picking up her 5th foul and being sent to the bench. Dixie now had problems with free throws - missing some critical shots in the last minute. Dixie had a chance to set up an inbound play to pull ahead but Shawnee thwarted their attempt. With 14 seconds left Dixie's Dunn hit one free throw to pull Dixie within 1 once again. But that would be the end of Dixie's scoring as Shawnee would be fouled after the inbounds and hit their shots from the charity stripe to escape with a 41-38 victory.

Coach Money was disappointed with the loss, “I think that we are a better basketball team than we were earlier in the season. It would have been nice to get it done tonight. But they figured out a way to win. They played a tough 1-2-2 all night. We shot 3 for 16 in the first half. If we would have shot a little better, we wouldn't have had so far to come. Our challenge now is to keep our heads up. I'm proud of the kids and proud of what we have become thus far and I think we can become even better”. Comments:

email: Chris Tilton


 

Default Template for Easy Text To HTML Converter