Gallery by Greg Barnett
Gardner – PikeView didn’t shoot well in its sectional opener against Midland Trail but when you generate enough extra possessions that percentage matters less and less.
The Panthers forced 29 turnovers and grabbed as many offensive rebounds as the Patriots did total rebounds (19), collecting a 62-38 Wednesday in Gardner.
Slow out of the gate, the Panthers picked up the pace late in the first quarter and never allowed Trail to seriously threaten throughout the night.
“We’ve struggled offensively all season long,” PikeView head coach Tracy Raban said. “We try to be aggressive on defense and convert turnovers to get those extra shots. Offensive boards kind of shocks me because that’s been a weakness of ours and this week, actually yesterday I just kind of broke down hard on them at practice and told them we’ve got to get offensive shots. I don’t know what team they’ve been looking at, but we don’t we don’t shoot well enough to be standing around and watching somebody shoot. We’ve got to crash the boards and get offensive rebounds. So that’s a pleasing stat to hear. Like I said, we live and die with our defensive pressure and to force 29 turnovers, that’s what we got to have, but I don’t think we converted enough off of those turnovers.”
Raban’s assessment was spot on early.
The Panthers missed their first four shots and didn’t register a field goal until three minutes into the game.
With PikeView up 4-0, Trail broke its own skid when Raelyn Morris connected on a layup before Riley Meadows answered. Morris was good again from inside the arc after Trail forced another turnover, cutting the deficit back to two at 6-4. But five quick points from Jaelynn Shrewsbury kicked off a 10-2 run that put the Panther sup 16-6 after a quarter.
Trail found more success in the second quarter, raising its field goal percentage from 23 percent to 44 and cutting its turnovers from seven to five but the seven offensive rebounds the Panthers grabbed in the second stanza neutralized the already thin margins.
PikeView outscored the Trail 16-10 in the second quarter with Shrewsbury picking up where she left off in the first. The reserve guard scored eight points, bringing her total to 13 at the break.
Her contributions led to a 32-16 halftime advantage.
Out of the break, the Panthers delivered the knockout blow. They shot 44 percent from the field in the third quarter, their best of any frame and coupled it with 20 points.
Leading 35-20 after Trail’s Jayla Barnhouse connected on a layup, the Panthers embarked on an 8-0 run, kickstarted by a pair of buckets from Meadows.
It gave the hosts an advantage that never dipped below 20 the rest of the way. Meanwhile the Patriots’ turnovers proved fatal as they gave the ball away eight times in the third quarter, offsetting a 71 percent (5 of 7) field goal percentage in the quarter.
“That’s been a problem all year,” Trail head coach John Mark Kincaid said. “Addison Isaacs, when she went out she was the ball handler. I didn’t have a point guard after that. My two shooting guards had to play point guard and we just had a bunch of young kids not ready. We’ve been turning the ball over a lot since we lost her to a knee injury. You don’t lose an all-state player – she’s the best player in the region. It’s difficult but on a positive note, everybody worked hard to get better. We’re better at the end of the year so this will play off into next year, because we only had one senior. So we’re gonna be hard to guard. I just wish we had been healthy because we knew it was gonna be a battle. We knew before the season it would be us and PikeView. You can’t afford that bad luck on our part. But we improved as the year went on and played hard.”
Up next for PikeView is a sectional championship matchup with Westside on Friday at PikeView, a rematch of last year’s sectional title game.
PikeView narrowly won both matchups between the two teams this season, winning 48-42 and 46-42.
“It’s a very even matchup,” Raban said. “it’s not necessarily the matchup I wanted, but we’ll accept the challenge. The girls are ready for it and they know what’s at stake. That is a tough team. Coach (Darren) Thomas does a great job of throwing junk defenses at you and we’ve not played well either time with him. They’ve been close ball games so I expect it to be another tight ballgame. It’s gonna be a matter of who wants to come out on top and who wants to host a regional game and who doesn’t. Hopefully we come more focused and we’ll hit the game film. We went down seven in the fourth quarter at their place and were able to win by six. So that fourth quarter, we figured out how to attack his junk defenses. So we’ll look at that game film and we’ll have a game plan. It’s a matter of if we can go and execute or not.”
Meadows led PikeView with 19 points while Shrewsbury added 15. Haley Justice finished with 11 to round out the Panthers.
Morris led Trail with 19 points.
MT: 6 10 12 10 – 38
PV: 16 16 20 10 – 62
Midland Trail
River Barnhouse 4, Jayla Barnhouse 4, Raelyn Morris 19, Navaeh Hall 5, Maddie Harrell 2, Whitney Bibb 2, Holly Ward 2
PikeView
Hannah Harden 3, Brooke Craft 5, Cat Farmer 5, Jaelynn Shrewsbury 15, Tylar Burks 2, Haley Justice 11, Jordin Hawks 2, Riley Meadows 19
