For the Tribune

The Seymour girl’s basketball team entered their

game against Jennings County with an undefeated record Tuesday night at Lloyd E. Scott Gymnasium, but a slow start early in the game had a lasting effect on the Owls.

The Panthers came out strong in the first quarter and held on late to come away with the 62-59 win over the Owls to give them their first loss overall and in the Hoosier Hills Conference on the season.

Owls Coach Jason Longmeier knew the Panthers were a much-improved team, and he knew his team would have to play hard to come away with a win.

“You come out in a conference game not throwing punches like the other team, and that was kind of what happened,” Longmeier said. “I didn’t feel like we came out ready to go like we have the past couple of games. I thought our kids battled, fought hard and had a couple of defensive lapses.”

The Cougars jumped-out to a 14-9 lead in the first quarter as the Owls had a hard time getting any offense going. The second quarter was much the same as the Panthers won that quarter to lead 25-16 at halftime.

“We struggled with them last year,” Longmeier said. “They do such a good job of making you play an ugly game that in the first half we did that. I thought in the second half we played a pretty clean game. We had too many easy looks at the basket we didn’t finish.”

A bright spot for the Owls was their ability to win the battle of the boards, 43-35.

“We did out rebound them, but we had stretches where the rebounding really killed us,” Longmeier said. “I thought (Baylee) Krueger’s offensive rebounds killed us. There was a stretch where they had four offensive rebounds on sequence, and I really think the difference in the game was their ability to finish at the rim.”

The Owls had a better second half on the offensive side of things as they scored 43 points, while allowing the Panthers to put up 37. The Owls had a chance to tie the game at the buzzer, but their last-second 3-pointer was off.

Mikayla Fee led the Owls with 14 points, while Maci Lubker scored 15 and Emilee Pollmann had 13. Kayla Griffin had 12 rebounds for the Owls. Leading the way for the Panthers was Krueger with 21 points.

The Owls (6-1, 1-1) will travel to Madison on Saturday.