Back in November, Crest and Southern Coffey Countys girls may have played one of the uglier games of high school basketball that youll see.
The final score was 21-20 in favor of the Lady Titans and nearly three months later, both teams met in the same gym (at Crest) to decide who got to play one-seed Olpe in the 1A regional semifinal on Thursday.
Similarly to November, the Lady Titans came out on top again but much more scoring was involved as Southern Coffey County beat the Lady Lancers 57-43.
The game marked the final time that Crests quartet of seniors, Regan Godderz, Jewel Armstrong, Camryn Strickler, and Cassie Bowen competed together on the basketball court minus the fact that Armstrong had to sit out the game due to a concussion.
It just sucks, Crest head coach Megan Mason said holding back some tears. Especially considering that we had a senior that couldnt play. But they fought hard. After the game, we talked about how far weve come since our first year together. What makes it so hard is we had seniors that filled big shoes for us. All four seniors will be missed dearly next year. Theyre half of our team.
And while Mondays game was a send-off of sorts for the Lady Lancers, the Lady Titans who have just two seniors on their team got to revel in the fact that their season gets to live on at least for a couple more days.
At this time of year, a win is a win, SCC head coach Jeff True said. Youve got to survive and advance. Now we have to go and play at Olpes place and thatll be a tall order. Things will really have to fall just right because theyre good in all phases.
THE LADY TITANS jumped out to a 10-point lead late in the first quarter. SCCs zone defense was keeping the Lady Lancers off balance and their offense, led by junior forward Reed Szambecki whose 59 frame towered over the much smaller Crest players on her way to a game-high 21 points, was dominating inside,
I was really happy with how we started the game, True said. I thought we really came out with a good tempo and a good pace.
Crests scoring woes continued into the second quarter but they were able to get to the free throw line which kept them in that range of 10 points heading into halftime.
The fouls seemed pretty disproportionate but Crest did a good job knocking down free throws which is something they always do, True said. When we play them in the summer, they make their free throws so we talked about how thats something we didnt want to do.
Coming out of the half, the Lady Lancers seemed refocused. They did a better job of challenging the SCC posts and found a way to get to the rim.
Heading into the fourth quarter, they trailed by eight but on their opening possession, Godderz hit a three to cut the lead to five which was the smallest the lead had been since the opening minutes of the game.
We had the choice to either be the power or be overpowered, Mason said. We had to start being aggressive and to start the half, they really bought into that. When we did that we were moving the ball, getting better looks and getting to the foul line.
But the Lady Titans answered right back with a 9-0 run to push the lead back to double-digits. The Lady Lancers managed to get things within 10 several more times before the end of the game but SCC continued to find shots and answers down the stretch to keep a full comeback at bay.
Crest was led in scoring by Godderz who had 11 and sophomore Aubrey Holloran had 10. Aside from Szambecki, sophomore Kyra Ohl contributed 10 points for SCC.
