By Mark Schafer | The News-Review
DES MOINES – They were a renewed team in the second half.
Throughout the first half points had been at a premium, but the Panthers continued to work their way through the slow spots and were able to keep pace with Highland.
At first, it seemed as if the second half started with the Panthers breaking through. In the first minute of the second half the Panthers were able to stop the Huskies from getting into their game plan. At the same time the Panthers were making shots.
Suddenly the five point deficit had been trimmed to just one point and it seemed like the Panthers were on the prowl for the lead.
Then it was as if something changed within the Panthers. Although they played with poise to get back into the game, when they were close to the lead, the points seemed to disappear. So did the crisp passing.
“We got within one a couple of times in the second half, and then we just seemed to get lost on where we wanted to go with the ball,” said Pekin head coach, Neil Hartz. “We weren’t taking the shots that we wanted to take. We just weren’t taking the shots or doing the things that we wanted to do.”
Throughout the third quarter the Panthers were able to rely heavily on Anna Hadley who dominated the inside lane. Highland started to adjust to that and they were able to start to guard Hadley more aggressively. Once the Huskies took away the open shots of Hadley, it seemed as if the energy from the Panthers started to disappear.
Highland was able to lead by four after three quarters.
The start of the fourth quarter featured another surge for the Panthers as they scored the first three points of the quarter to once again pull within one point.
“The biggest thing that the girls need to understand is they need to have that killer instinct when you have the opponents down,” Hartz said. “You need to make them make the mistakes. I thought we were just a little hesitant and started to make too many of our own mistakes when we got close to the lead.”
Nothing seemed to change too much for the Panthers once they were able to close within one point of the Huskies.
The only thing that did change was how well the passes connected with teammates.
When the Panthers were trailing their passes seemed to fall right into place with the basketball easily being received by the Pekin teammates. When they were able to get close to the lead the passes seemed to fly away from the teammates and either land in the hands of a Highland player, or sail too far and land out of bounds.
“The good news is we have a lot of games to continue to improve on,” Hartz said. “The bad news is we don’t have a lot of time to change things because we have so many games. So we are going to have to be changing things on the fly. We just need to get better at rebounding in some situations.”
Highland grew the lead to as much as six in the middle stages of the final quarter, but the Panthers were able to respond one more time, getting within a shot of the lead. However, rebounds and passes disappeared from the Panthers. At the end of the day the Huskies pulled away to a 40-31 victory.
Pekin had started the game with an early lead, but a slow scoring first quarter slowed the hot start of Pekin down. Eventually the Panthers would trail 22-17 at halftime. Although they clawed back, they weren’t able to get the lead, and they suffered their fourth defeat in the last five games.
“I’ve told the girls that some of the teams we’ve lost to recently, we are much better than,” Hartz said.
Carlie Gambell led the Panthers with 12 points. Abby Guise would score 11 points in the game. Hadley scored five points and Maddy Petrehn had three points in the game.
Overall, the Panthers are 4-4 on the season all against SEISC north competition.
Pekin heads to Winfield-Mount Union on Tuesday, opening a three-game week. The Panthers return home to host Wapello on Friday and Sigourney on Saturday.
Photos by Mark Schafer
