Gallery by Greg Barnett
Gardner – Neither PikeView nor Summers County are offensive juggernauts, preferring to rely on their respective defenses.
It’s why an offensive run from the host Panthers proved too much to overcome.
Leading 28-19 at the half, Class AAA No. 9 PikeView opened the third quarter with a 13-2 run, fending off a fourth-quarter run from the Class AA No. 2-ran Lady Bobcats to earn a 55-43 Monday evening in Gardner.
Offensive efficiency was nonexistent for either team. Summers shot 14 of 52 (27 percent) from the field while PikeView fared little better with a 20 for 60 (33 percent) clip. But Summers’ 17 turnovers through three quarters and the offensive play of PikeView standout Riley Meadows (24 points) tipped the scales in way of the hosts.
Meadows in particular was the game changer. She missed all five of her first quarter shots, frequently hitting the side and bottom of the backboard and on occasion, nothing at all.
With her team leading 10-9 after a quarter she finally found a rhythm less than a minute into the second frame and never lost it, going 5 for 7 from the field in the second quarter to score 12 of her team’s 18 points in the frame, helping them to their nine-point advantage at the break.
“She’s struggled for the most part, coming off the year that she had last year,” PikeView head coach Tracy Raban said of Meadows. “There have been a lot of one-on-one talks between me and her and I think it finally clicked tonight. She settled in and let the game come to her. She didn’t force as many shots tonight. I thought overall she played a pretty good game offensively and defensively. And I think it was just her settling in and Cat being able to handle the ball and take that pressure off for her helped and I think she had some mismatches. So I think she took advantage of those and then she just settled down let the game come to her.”
Summers started fast on the offensive end getting a pair of buckets from Jaelynn Boone and Gracie Harvey to take a 4-0 lead in the first minute. But after Cheyenne Smith nailed a layup at the 5:01 mark of the opening frame the Lady Bobcats saw a lid snap on the bucket, failing to hit another field goal until Harvey converted on a three-point play at the 7:30 mark of the second frame, tying the game at 12.
Meadows, who nailed her first shot of the game two possessions prior, nailed a 3 that kicked off a 7-0 PikeView run.
Abby Persinger, who battled foul trouble most of the evening, snapped the skid for the Bobcats with a jumper at the 4:45 mark but it took another two minutes before Smith added to Summers’ total.
But that was the start of another lengthy skid.
Leading 21-17, PikeView closed the half with a 7-2 run, leading 28-19.
That momentum extended into the third quarter on both sides.
Summers went over seven minutes without a made field goal across the two quarters, allowing PikeView to build a 20-point cushion with what amounted to 13-2 run over the first six minutes of the third quarter.
It featured 3s from Tylar Burks and Jaelynn Shrewsbury with Meadows adding six points to the spurt.
“A lot of times we’ll come out flat in the third quarter,” Raban said. “We fight so hard in the first quarter and sometimes you don’t want to go to halftime. So we challenged them at the half to not be that team that we’ve been in the past that’s come out flat. They’re not going to quit no matter what the score is. So we just challenged them and they finally responded to us.”
Ahead 41-21 with 10 minutes to play, the game seemed settled given the offensive ineptitude of Summers throughout the evening.
That quickly proved inaccurate.
Harvey, who scored a team-high 16 points, hit on a layup and Avery Lilly netted a pair of free throws to chip into the lead before the end of the third. The run extended into the fourth with the duo knocking down a pair of free throws each, followed by a layup courtesy of Smith to make it a 41-31 contest just a minute into the fourth.
The run was snapped by Meadows and answered from that point forward. Summers never cut the deficit below eight points the rest of the way.
“I thought they played with a little more energy than we did,” Summers head coach Rick Blevins said. “Not making any excuses for my kids but we had a tough game on Saturday but PikeView might have played Saturday. So that’s not that’s not a reason. It’s not. We just didn’t want it as bad as they did in the early going, especially the first half. We got down 10 or 12. Then we got down about 20. And then we finally said, ‘Oh, we can, if we play hard, make this maybe respectable.’ Maybe we can really get back in the game and we almost did. So I’m proud of them for that effort in the fourth quarter. I mean, I really am. PikeView’s a good team and they’re very well-coached. We just got to get better.”
Up next for the Lady Bobcats is a home matchup on Friday with No. 1 Wyoming East in a rematch of last year’s Class AA state title game.
East took the early meeting between the two teams 65-34 in New Richmond.
“Hopefully Friday we’ll come out and make a few shots,” Blevins said. “But we got a lot of work to do between now and then, obviously, because we played like we did tonight – ugly. So, we need to get better and just need to work hard these next three days and put this one behind us because it is behind us. We’ll try not to make the same mistakes again. Get ready for Wyoming East and get back on track.”
SC: 9 10 6 18 – 43
PV: 10 18 13 14 – 55
Summers County
Grace Harvey 16, Cheyenne Smith 9, Avery Lilly 10, Abby Persinger 2, Jaelynn Boone 6
PikeView
Brooke Craft 4, Cat Farmer 9, Jaelynn Shrewsbury 5, Tylar Burks 7, Haley Justice 6, Riley Meadows 24
