Lady Beavers, Lady Lions take it to the wire in rivalry game
After coming off big wins and looking to keep the winning momentum in 3A-7 conference play, Hot Spring County rivals the Glen Rose Lady Beavers and the Bismarck Lady Lions battled hard at the Glen Rose Arena Tuesday night.
After losing the lead in the first quarter and trailing for most of Tuesday’s game, the Lady Beavers came up big at the 22 second mark of the fourth quarter with senior Love Doddridge going in for a layup to take a one point lead and being fouled for the chance to make a 3-point play. Doddridge missed the free throw, but junior Laney Crutchfield pulled down the rebound to keep the Lady Beavers in possession. With 15 seconds remaining, the Lady Lions were forced to foul and sent Glen Rose sophomore Ashley Stafford to the free throw line. Stafford made both free throws to put the Lady Beavers ahead by three points. The Lady Lions tried to tie the game with just seconds remaining but couldn’t get past the Lady Beavers’ defense to fall 46-43.
“Boy that was a fun one to watch and coach both I think,” Lady Beavers’ coach David Moon said after the ball game.
Moon was pleased with the Lady Beavers effort in Tuesday’s come from behind win but thought that the Lady Beavers missed too many layups during the course of the game. “We missed a bunch of layups,” he said. “We missed a bunch of shots within six feet of the basket and that’s one thing we mentioned in the dressing room just now. We’ve got to concentrate more in practice around the rim.”
The Lady Beavers started Tuesday’s rivalry game with a 7-1 run to take the early lead over the Lady Lions. Bismarck’s Alivia Gordon, Hannah Collie and Makenna Norris then flipped the game to give the Lady Lions the lead 14-11 after going on their own 13-4 run. By the end of the quarter, the Lady Lions had taken the lead 18-14 over the Lady Beavers.
“I think we missed six layups in the first quarter,” Moon said. “Which if you make those we’re maybe double figure lead instead of being down whatever we were down. And it wasn’t just one or two people, it was a number of folks getting to the basket, which is what we want to do, but we don’t want to just get there, we want the ball in basket when we do
get there.”
At the start of the second quarter, the Lady Beavers came within two points of the Lady Lions’ lead with Stafford making a shot but the Lady Lions were able to go on a 7-2 run to lead 25-18 at the four minute mark. Stafford was able to bring the Lady Beavers back with backto-back goals and kickstarted a late 6-2 run to put the Lady Beavers down 27-24 at the half.
Scoring slowed in the third with both teams being held under double digits. The Lady Lions outscored the Lady Beavers 8-6 to take a five point, 35-30, lead going into the fourth quarter.
The Lady Lions and Lady Beavers went back and forth scoring in the final quarter of play down to the five minute mark where the Lady Lions led by three points 39-36. Stafford then connected on two free throws for the Lady Beavers to cut the lead to one point. Collie then made two free throws and Ember Hughes followed it up with a layup to put the Lady Lions’ lead back to five points with 2:29 remaining in the game. That’s when the momentum started to shift to the Lady Beavers. Glen Rose’s Kamryn Raper hit a basket at the 2:03 mark while Abby Ditzig added another two points at the 1:32 mark to put the Lady Beavers down by one point, 43-42.
The Lady Lions kept the lead until committing a turnover a the 29 second mark to give the ball back to the Lady
Beavers. That’s when Doddridge went in for the layup, scored and drew the foul to give the Lady Beavers the lead and momentum to win the game.
Doddridge and Stafford were the leading scorers for the Lady Beavers with 12 points each. Raper and Ditzig followed with eight points each for the Lady Beavers. For the Lady Lions, Collie led in scoring with 17 points while Kady Pleasants added 10 points.
In their next contest, the Lady Lions return home to face Prescott Friday at Holt Gymnasium. The Lady Beavers go on the road Friday to Haskell Harmony Grove, another close-county conference rival, for their next game. Coach Moon feels that Harmony Grove is similar to the Lady Lions despite the Lady Lions getting a 48-27 win over Harmony Grove. “I know they played last week and Bismarck beat them by quite a bit, but before that I think they were kind of similar,” he said. “I’ve watched a little bit of video on Harmony Grove already and it’s a situation where if we take care of our business we have a chance to succeed and if we don’t then we’re going to make it hard on ourselves.”
The Lady Beavers and Lady Lions are scheduled to clash again on February 5 at Holt Gymnasium in Bismarck.
To see the game winning layup by Doddridge check out the video on the
Malvern Daily Record’s website at www. malvern-online.com