Panthers Defense is Difference Against Arrows
J. C. Tilton
Twin Valley South Varsity Boys team was coming off of a disappointing loss to Covington on Friday night, and needed to rebound. The Preble Shawnee Arrows were coming in with a Friday night win over Milton Union, but were playing for pride - TVS had beaten the Arrows in their first encounter during the Shawnee Holiday Tournament. So there was incentive on both sides coming into this game. TVS played aggressive defense thru out the game. They applied full court pressure from the start. Shawnee played an aggressive 1/2 court man to man.
In the first quarter it looked like Shawnee wanted to establish an inside game. They worked the ball into the paint and Via was able to get some early points. South was able to penetrate against the Shawnee defense and get some inside points themselves. Souths aggressive defense did generate some early turnovers. In the second quarter both teams put walls up around the basket. Neither team could effectively penetrate and this was the lowest scoring quarter of the game for either team. The first half was really a defensive slugfest. At halftime, Shawnee had a 16-13 lead and it looked doubtful that either team would be able to muster 40 points by games end.
The game opened up a bit in the third quarter. Partially due to some players beginning to accumulate fouls. In this quarter, Shawnee's Bailey got his third foul, as did South's Marker and Betzner. Shawnee did experiment with a more spread out offense in order to stretch the Panther defense. South reached into their offensive bag of tricks as well, occasionally going to a 1-4 baseline set. South was able to score, but Shawnee could not keep pace - their shots were not dropping, particularly in the last part of the third quarter where they had some open looks. By the end of the third quarter, the damage was done - South had broken out to a 30-20 lead.
Shawnee had to claw their way back from this 10 point deficit. And they went to work, gradually chipping away at the lead. The Panthers were being aggressive on defense, but this lead to post player Betzner picking up his 4th foul late in the quarter and center Smith fouling out. This gave Shawnee a clear height advantage in the last minutes of the game. With less than a minute left Shawnee was forced to foul and press to get possession of the ball. Bassler hit some critical free throws; going 2 for 2 and 1 for 2 in his back to back trips to the foul line. These three points would be the difference as South held off Shawnee's 4th quarter surge to win 44-41.
Still coach Augsperger thought that, "The team gave up too much in the 4th quarter. Overall, it was a good defensive effort there are 3 players from Preble Shawnee that regularly score in double figures and we stopped them. I thought our defense was aggressive against their guards and we did a pretty job on their post." Coach Augsperger was disappointed in the teams finish against Covington, but saw that the team was focused coming into the Shawnee game. Which is sometimes difficult when there are two big games back to back. Betzner lead the scoring for the Panthers with 11 points followed by Bassler with 10; Moore was Shawnee's high points man with 11. The South JV's won handily 46 to 25; scoring Dawson 9, W. Bassler 1, Montgomery 11, Stebbin 6, Sizemore 2, Bryant 8, C. Bassler 7 Stearman 2. Comments: email: Chris Tilton
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