Tough week of practice pays off
■ The Lady Panthers smashed Huntsville for a 58-35 victory.
When the bench is just as productive as the starting lineup, it doesn’t matter who’s out on the floor for the Siloam Springs girls.
The Lady Panthers remained undefeated Friday with a 58-35 victory over Huntsville in a nonconference girls basketball game at Panther Activity Center.
Four Lady Panthers — seniors Sydney Moorman and Mia Hevener and sophomores Brooke Ross and Mimo Jacklik — each scored 11 points to lead a balanced scoring attack as Siloam Springs (4-0) pulled away from the Lady Eagles (3-4).
“We played really hard. We had a really tough week of practice,” said Siloam Springs head coach Tim Rippy. “We’ve held them accountable for everything. We’re looking to clean up some things. Obviously this nice week of practice, we wanted to work on man-to-man defense tonight because we’re going to have to have some man-to-man defense down the stretch and in conference play. So that’s our first time to basically play almost a full game in man-toman.
“You know I thought our kids played real hard. We obviously made some mistakes in it, but they were things that were teachable and correctable. Our communication, I think, has to be a little bit better. Our rebounding has to be better. We’re probably a better rebounding team in our zone than we are in man-to-man.”
One change was in the starting lineup as the coaching staff wanted to reward the players that had the best week of practice, Rippy said.
“All of our kids are good with that,” Rippy said. “We had that conversation with them yesterday and they were happy for those kids because they had earned it.”
An added bonus was those coming off the bench also played well.
Hevener entered the game and scored all 11 of her points in the first half, including a pair of 3-pointers and a nice backdoor cut bucket with the assist from Brooke Smith.
Jacklik also came off the bench and had a pair of treys and an old-fashioned three-point play.
“(Hevener) came in and she shot it well tonight from the perimeter,” Rippy said. “Then she had a good back door cut once and made a nice catch and finish. I like seeing that because to our kids it shouldn’t matter who starts. They need to be ready to go. And I think we saw that tonight. Some of our best scoring came from the bench. I think we’re going to continue to see that. I think some of our kids may be more comfortable coming off the bench. And we’re still playing with that a little bit and trying to figure out what’s best for us.”
Huntsville took an early 7-2 lead in the first quarter but Siloam Springs came back and led 17-11 before a 3-pointer from Addisyn Routh made it 17-14 at the end of the first quarter.
Siloam Springs led 20-16 in the second quarter when the Lady Panthers went on an 11-0 run to take control of the game.
Jacklik’s three-point play started it and Smith followed with a basket inside after a Lady Eagles turnover.
Hevener splashed a 3-pointer from the top of the key to go up 28-16 and hit a free throw a couple of possessions later to make it 29-16.
Moorman’s layup completed the run for a commanding 31-16 lead.
The Lady Eagles got a pair of 3-pointers from Routh and Tanna Wilson to pull within 35-22 at halftime.
Huntsville cut into the Lady Panthers’ lead even more at the start of the third quarter with a 3-pointer from Alissa Pillow and a basket by Madisyn Thomas to make it 35-27 and forcing Rippy to call a timeout.
“Yeah and I didn’t want to (take a timeout),” he said. “We call it in practice, ‘I don’t want to have to bail you out if you’re capable of handling it,’ so we tried to let it go a little bit. Once it got to eight, I was like, all right, that’s close enough. We’ve got to make a couple of changes and get things corrected and they responded really well from that point.”
Moorman got the lead back to double-digits for good with a 3-pointer in the corner to ignite a 10-2 run to close the quarter and go up 45-29.
Reina Tiefel opened the fourth quarter with a traditional three-point play and another basket, and Jacklik had a steal and score as the Lady Panthers went up 52-31. They would lead by as many as 25 points in the fourth quarter.
Thomas led Huntsville with nine points, while Routh and Pillow each had eight.
“Siloam does a great job,” said Huntsville coach Greg McCone. “They’re a little bit stronger than us, so I think maybe we wore down some. But what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to use some of these big schools to improve for our conference and Siloam gave us a good test for that.”
Tiefel added nine points for the Lady Panthers, while Smith had three and Halle Hernandez two.
Siloam Springs returns to action on Tuesday against Pea Ridge, which defeated 5A-West conference foe Alma 63-41 last Tuesday.
“They’re one of the most talented teams we’ve played,” Rippy said. “I got to watch them play Alma on Tuesday. It’s going to be a tough test.”
Siloam Springs 58, Huntsville 35
Huntsville 14 8 7 6 — 35
Siloam Springs 17 18 10 13 — 58
Huntsville (3-4): Thomas 9, Routh 8, Pillow 8, Wilson 5, Mayes 3, Maupin 2.
Siloam Springs (4-0): Hevener 11, Moorman 11, Ross 11, Jacklik 11, Tiefel 9, Smith 3, Hernandez 2.