The Iola girls put up their best defensive effort of the season Tuesday night when the Fillies took down Osawatomie 42-22 on the road for their third-straight win.
The win moves Iola to 7-10 and 5-4 in Pioneer League play and marks the third time this season that Iola and the Lady Trojans have squared off with the Fillies taking the season series 2-1.
“It was a good effort,” head coach Becky Carlson said. “Offensively we were a little flat but defensively I thought we did a great job. We wanted to stop the drive and we did that most of the time and they have a couple of girls who shoot threes and we held them to just one three. We played well. Not as much fire but we had enough to win.”
Shots were not falling for the Fillies early and Osawatomie took a modest lead at the start of the game before Iola ended the quarter on a 6-0 run to take a 10-7 lead after the first quarter.
“We didn’t panic,” Carlson said. “And that’s a good thing because in the past we’ve been known to panic. We kept our heads about us.”
The Fillies really turned on their defense after that, allowing Osawatomie just three buckets in the second and third quarter combined while Iola outscored them 18-8 including an 11-3 run in the second quarter.
Junior guard Madisyn Holloway had all three of her threes in the second half to aid the Fillies’ slow but steady piling on of the Lady Trojans. She finished the game with a team-high 15 points.
With Thursday’s game versus Anderson County and next’s week’s matchups with Santa Fe Trail and Wellsville, Iola has an opportunity to end the season as winners of four of their final five games. This comes after a 4-10 start to the season where the Fillies had to weather both injuries and growing pains after replacing four of their five starters from the 2016-17 season.
“We’ve never given up,” Carlson said. “Our defense was not very good to start the season and we’ve really improved. We’ve really worked hard on that. We just play together better. The girls are getting used to each other including a lot of the girls coming off the bench like (Piper Moore) and (Shaylee Sutterby). All of that has gone into us playing well down the stretch. We have confidence.”
As mentioned earlier, the Fillies have a rematch with the Lady Bulldogs after playing and beating them 48-31 last Friday.
“I feel like defensively we have to play as well as we did tonight,” Carlson said. “We’ll need to keep them out of the lane and off the boards. If we do those things, offensively we will be fine.”
Iola (10-11-7-14—42) (2pt/3pt-FT-F-TP) Holloway 1/3-4-1-15, Gardner 4/0-0-2-8, Riley 2/0-1-1-5, Sutterby 2/0-1-1-5, Bauer 1/0-0-1-2, Carson 1/0-0-1-2, Moore 1/0-0-0-2, Morrison 0/0-0-1-0, TOTALS: 14/3-5-12-42.
Osawatomie (7-5-3-7—22) (2pt/3pt-FT-F-TP) Lagasse 1/1-0-2-5, Wallace 1/0-2-0-4, M. Lagasse 1/0-2-2-4, Hendrickson 0/1-0-1-3, Ballou 1/0-1-1-3, Shippy 0/0-3-2-3, Kaempfe 0/0-0-1-0, Johnson 0/0-0-2-0, Seidl 0/0-0-3-0. TOTALS: 4/2-8-13-22.
PHOTO: Senior Chloe Gardner makes her way around an Osawatomie defender in the Fillies 42-22 win on Tuesday. REGISTER/TIMOTHY EVERSON
