Lady Panthers buzzed by Hornets, spun by Cyclones

With more games behind them and playing on their own hardwood, the fifth ranked Saratoga Lady Panthers (7-13), (0-7) improved their performance against Pine Bluffs (5-9), (2-3) Friday night.

Saratoga lost by 6 back in December, but propelled by senior Taylor Smith’s 18 point performance, came within 3 points of a win this time. Smith polished those points with four assists.

That trend is promising if the Lady Panther’s end up facing fourth ranked Pine Bluffs in a play-in game to reach Regionals.

Both teams seemed aware of the coming post-season showdown and deployed full-court presses from the start in a high-octane game. The strategy worked for both teams resulting in turnovers, but Pine Bluffs was able to convert them into points.

Still, the score was never more than four points apart and Saratoga, in spite of early mistakes, kept the Lady Hornets buzzing.

The Lady Panthers grabbed 32 rebounds, above their season average of 29. Mati Love accounted for eight of them, Smith and Justine Fourman each pulled in six and Amber Young had five.

“I was happy with our rebounding,” coach Matt Love said. “This has been one of our weak spots as a team, and I was happy with our overall effort.”

Size mattered in the game and while Saratoga managed to get shots off, the Lady Panther’s defense slipped under Pine Bluffs’ height.

“Pine Bluffs always has big girls, and this year’s no exception,” Love said. “We had a tough time shutting down their post players.”

Still, Saratoga was in the game at the final minute. After a pair of free throws from Smith, Veronica Lincoln drew a foul on a putback with 50 seconds left to bring the score to 54-57. Lincoln couldn’t connect on her free throw and Pine Bluffs dribbled the remaining time away.

Thirty seconds after the tip-off Saturday against number one ranked Southeast (13-4),(5-1), sophomore Justine Fourman pulled up just outside the arc and dropped a 3-point shot in to draw first blood.

Fourman’s 3 was the only thing that put Saratoga on the scoreboard two-thirds of the way through the first quarter.

Southeast went into a press early and beat Saratoga at halfcourt. The Lady Panthers couldn’t connect on their passes and a total of 16 turnovers prevented them from getting set up on offense.

Southeast spread the butter on offense and with spot-on shooting, piled on the points.

“Southeast girls are good ... they had to shoot around 75 percent from the field, I don’t remember them hardly missing anything,” Love said.

Fourman continued to have a good game hitting three 3-pointers overall and scoring 24 total points, well over twice her game average of 9. Smith’s threat kept Southeast’s defense occupied and she came down with a team-high (for the game) of five rebounds.

“Southeast plays man-to-man defense, and they are exceptionally good at it, as they really keyed on Taylor Smith, holding her to only 6 points,” Love said. “(Smith) did a great job since she was basically double-teamed the entire game.”

Love finished the game with 4 points, all of them free throws and along with Fourman, got two steals.

The score was 40-73 when the clock ticked to zero.

“There’s only two other teams in the state that have scored 40 points or more on their defense, so I was really happy with that,” Love said.

The Lady Panthers have less than two weeks to practice fundamentals and work on putting four quarters together. If they can do that they should repeat a win against Little Snake River tomorrow and be ready for a road rematch against number three ranked conference foe Burns (11-6), (3-2) on Saturday.

“It’s the little things that are the difference now,” Love said.