Lady Panthers cruise to 77-23 win over Lady Eagles, grab first win of season
Published 12:14 am Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Southside’s Tanisha Blevins, right, tries to get past Ellwood’s Chasity Minter during Tuesday’s game at Southside. -- Robert Hudson
The Southside Lady Panthers took control early and never let up, as they defeated the Ellwood Christian Lady Eagles 77-23 at home on Tuesday.
Jason Bothwell, head girls basketball coach of Southside (1-2), said while he was impressed with his team’s performance in spots, there’s still much room for improvement.
“I saw a lot of things I liked, I saw some good, I saw some bad and I saw some ugly,” Bothwell said. “We’re off to a slow start at 0-2 and this is our first victory, and I’m happy we could pick it up, but I feel like it’s a lot of work to be done on the defensive side of the ball and especially on the offensive side of the ball. We’re not as aggressive as I would like to be on the post, but we stand in a good position.”
Southside dominated early, starting the game on a 23-0 run in the first quarter before going into halftime with a 46-10 lead.
The Lady Panthers capitalized off of mistakes caused by their full-court press defense, forcing the Lady Eagles (0-4) into a number of turnovers that turned into transition baskets.
Southside ended the third ahead 71-16.
Ki’onna Likely led Southside with 23 points, while Ashley Cunningham and Tanisha Blevins each added 12 points for Southside.
Mykiria Mitchell led Ellwood with 9 points, while Ebony Simpson and Alayshia Scott each had 6 points for the Lady Eagles.
Matthews Williams, Jr., head girls basketball coach of Ellwood, said the young Lady Eagles have to improve on their fundamentals, but he thinks they’ll play better once they start their Class 1A area slate.
“They weren’t quite as solid as I thought they were going to be. We’re fundamentally not as sound as we need to be,” Williams said. “We need to be a little more fundamentally sound, we’ve got to work on passing, boxing out and things like that. We’ve got a group that we’ve just put together and hasn’t played many games, but I think they’re going to come around when we play in our classification and our area play. I think we’re going to get better.”
The Lady Panthers will take the floor again on Friday against in-county rival Keith starting at 5 p.m.
The Lady Eagles will play again on Dec. 4 at Keith in their first area game of the season.
