Washington County Enterprise-Leader
PG Girls Get 4Q Stops
LADY TIGERS BEAT SHILOH 62-55 ON COLORS DAY
PRAIRIE GROVE — Coach Kevin Froud changed defenses and Prairie Grove outscored Shiloh Christian 16-9 in the fourth quarter to break away from a 46-46 tie and win its second straight conference game.
Shiloh’s Hailey Tunnell was on a roll. The 5-11 senior guard scored 14 of her 23 points in the third quarter. She hit a pair of threes and converted an old-fashioned 3- point play to keep the Lady Saints in front, 43-40, but Froud found a means to shut her down. She was held to a single point over the last three minutes of the third and went scoreless in the fourth with Camryn Cash fighting through screens to contain Tunnell.
“Camryn, her long arms and everything. Like we talked about it in practice sometimes you have those nights where anything you throw up’s gone. We’d run a bunch of them at her. We’d worked on our special defense against them and we went to a diamond and guarded her and covered up everybody else. They had trouble scoring after that,” Froud said.
Maiesha Washington, a 6-2 freshman, tried to pick up the slack for Shiloh. She used a spin move to tie the game at 46-all with 1:12 left in the third quarter but Prairie Grove dominated the early portion of the fourth by engineering a 9-0 run.
Senior Trinity Dobbs finished with 13 points, eight rebounds and eight assists. She recovered a loose ball jarred away by Shiloh’s physical play and drove downcourt, finding Lexie Henry for a spot- up 3- pointer on the left wing. Henry returned the favor by tracking down a loose ball and passing to Cash for a layup. Henry stole away Shiloh’s next possession, pushed the ball into the front court and handed out another assist to Zoe Hubbs. Dobbs then beat the Lady Saints to the goal and finished by kissing a shot off the glass as the Lady Tigers opened up a 55-46 lead in the first 1:46 of the fourth.
Shiloh cut that lead to 55-51 on a basket by Eden Graves and Washington’s 3- point play but they couldn’t find the basket for a 3:27 stretch. Prairie Grove took advantage with Henry, who led Prairie Grove with 19 points, knocking down another trey on a feed from Cash in the corner. The Lady Tigers accumulated 13 assists on the night with Dobbs making another huge play. She controlled a defensive rebound and brought the ball up then passed to Cash, who didn’t hesitate to nail a 15-footer.
An all-out battle occurred with Shiloh trying to rip the ball away from Prairie Grove. With players on the floor Shiloh players could be seen gripping the arms of Prairie Grove players, preventing them from picking it up. The play happened directly in front of Prairie Grove’s bench. Both Froud and the Lady Tiger fans wanted a foul but none was called.
The Shiloh coach called time- out with the battle continuing and possession was awarded to the Lady Saints, but they couldn’t score until they got a putback to fall with the clock down to 26.6 seconds. Four seconds later Cash sank both ends of a 1 and 1 to seal the 62-55 victory for Prairie Grove and the rescheduled Colors Day, originally set for Friday, Jan. 21, against Berryville, ended on a high note for Prairie Grove.