Kickapoo will play in its third consecutive Pink & White title game, but getting there wasn’t easy.
Ozark Conference rival Lebanon led by five after one quarter and had the game tied at the half before the Lady Chiefs pulled away for a 60-48 win.
Kickapoo head coach Jim Pendergrass had a simple message for his girls at the break.
“We needed to do a better job of defending and rebounding and taking care of the ball on offense. We were careless in the first half and did a much better job in the second half,” Pendergrass said.
Defensively, Kickapoo did excelled at taking driving lanes away from the Lebanon guards in the second half.
“We knew that they were going to be tough defensively, and that they were going to either run a zone or sag off of us. They didn’t really run a zone, they sagged off of us,” Lebanon head coach Brendan Kelley said. “What we do is we get to the rim really well. When they are sagging off like that and they have two or three people ready to help, it makes it really hard to play the game we want to play.”
The other second half factor was a scorching hot Jordan Wersinger.
Wersinger scored 20 of her game-high 29 points in the second half, which accounted for all but 13 of Kickapoo’s points in the second half.
“It is just one of those things where sometimes kids get hot. She got to where it seemed like everything she put up it seemed like it was going in,” Kelley said. “As a coach you try to ride that wave when it is happening for you. When it is happening to you, you try to think of anything you can to take that kid out of their rhythm and sometimes you just can’t do it. Sometimes they just get in a zone and that is what it really looked like.”
The performance was made even more timely due to the fact that all-stater Jordan Sanders managed just five points in the game due largely to foul trouble.
“She is definitely one of the top players on our team, so I knew with her out I needed to step up and lead the team more,” Wersinger said.
Hannah Collins also knocked down some timely shots on her way to a 14-point performance.
Kickapoo will now face nationally ranked North Little Rock for the White Division title at 2 p.m. on Friday.
“We are going to show up and do the same things that got us here,” Pendergrass said. “(We will) try to be a good defensive team, rebound the basketball and do all those fundamental things that you have to do. They are a great program.”
Lebanon, which got 24 points from Kelsey Winfrey, will have to bounce back quickly with an important third place match-up with Class 5 power Rock Bridge in what could be a sectional preview.
“We won seven games in a row until we lost tonight. It is almost like we forgot what it felt like to lose a basketball game. I am cautioning them not to let one loss turn in to two because we have to turn around and play tomorrow,” Kelley said. “It’s not just a game; it is a game against a really good opponent in Rock Bridge. Rock Bridge is similar to Kickapoo in that they play really good team defensive basketball. We are really going have to focus on hitting those mid-range jumpers to keep us in the game tomorrow because we aren’t going to be able to get to the rim every time.”
Lebanon will face Rock Bridge at 11 a.m. on Friday.
