No. 7 Panthers claw Lady Owls

BLOOMINGTON — For the second straight game, the Seymour Lady Owls had to face a ranked team.

But also for the second straight game, Seymour had 19 turnovers.

The biggest difference in Tuesday’s game was Bloomington South’s size, with three players ranging from 5-10 to 6-2. Kaila Hulls, Jessica Parker and Morgan Woodruff combined for 32 of South’s 54 points, and the Class 4A No. 7 Panthers held off the Owls 54-40.

Seymour trailed by 10 at halftime after committing eight turnovers and only scoring five points in the second quarter. They were down by double digits the rest of the way until getting within eight points once and nine points later on, but the Panthers quickly responded.

“When Hulls hit the 3 in the corner, it killed us,” Owls coach Beth DeVinney said of when Hulls made it a 43-31 game with a 3-pointer at 5:55 of the fourth quarter out of a timeout.

“It was a good shot, and there’s not much you could do about it,” DeVinney said. “Within nine, you’re giving yourself at least a chance to get back in the game at the end. That’s what we asked the kids to do. We played pretty hard, but we couldn’t hit an open shot. If we hit those two 3s at the end of the game, it’s a three-point game at one point. You look at a couple of ‘what ifs’ and it’s a totally different game.”

The Owls attempted eight 3-pointers in the game, with six coming in the fourth quarter, but couldn’t connect. Meanwhile, the Panthers sank five in the game, including Allyson Nicholson’s 3 with 39 seconds remaining in the first half to take a 27-17 lead into the locker room.

Seymour only trailed 13-12 after one period of play, but the Owls turned the ball over eight times in the second.

“They are a very physical team, so we haven’t really seen the physicality and the body size that they bring,” DeVinney said of the Panthers. “Just coming off the screens and there’s a big body there and not really having seen that before for a freshman point guard, I think that was a lot of it.
“We’re just making poor decisions in what we see. We’re seeing people ahead of us, and instead of bringing the ball back out and setting up the offense and letting things just happen for us, we’re forcing everything right now.”

Bridgette Jones’ steal and layup at 7:27 of the third quarter made it a 27-19 game, but the Owls didn’t score again until Meredith Adams’ bucket in the paint at 4:41. Kelsee Ennis scored the Panthers’ final five points of the quarter, and her team had a 38-25 lead going into the fourth.

Once Hulls hit the 3 in the fourth quarter, South maintained its double-digit advantage.
Hulls led all scorers with 19 points, coupled with nine rebounds. Parker added 11 points and Ennis finished with 10.

Erin Murphy scored nine of her 13 points from the free-throw line to lead the Owls, while Amanda Moore scored 10 and Jones tallied eight.

Despite the loss, DeVinney liked her team’s defensive output as compared to previous games.

“We had a really good defensive burst in the first half when (the Panthers) had to call timeout,” DeVinney said. “That’s the defense we’re capable of playing, so we just need to continue to work on that. I thought we hustled, I thought we rebounded and we did some better things tonight.”

DeVinney, however, would like to see the Owls play a full 32 minutes.

“What I told them at the end of the game, we’re going to play through the horn,” she said, “and I didn’t feel like we played through the horn. I thought we stopped playing with about 44 seconds left in the game, and I really want them to get out of that mode. Win or lose, you’re going to play through the horn.”

The Owls fell to 2-2 on the season, and they will travel to Brownstown Central on Thursday for a Jackson County matchup.

Box score

At Bloomington
Seymour         12 5   8  15—40
Bloom. South 13 14 11 16—54
Seymour (2-2): Amanda Moore 3-13 4-4 10, Erin Murphy 2-12 9-11 13, Meredith Adams 2-4 0-0 4, Brianna Gillaspy 0-4 2-2 2, Bridgette Jones 4-5 0-0 8, Chelsea Reinhart 1-2 1-2 3, Leah Elsner 0-0 0-0 0, Sam Browning 0-0 0-0 0, Taylor Gossett 0-0 0-0 0, totals 12-40 16-19 40
Bloomington South (5-0): Kelsee Ennis 4-11 0-0 10, Beth Anne Weiler 2-3 0-0 5, Jessica Parker 4-8 3-5 11, Kaila Hulls 8-16 2-2 19, Morgan Woodruff 1-1 0-0 2, Alexus Shields 0-1 0-0 0, Allyson Nicholson 1-5 0-1 3, Jessica Towell 0-2 4-4 4, totals 20-47 9-12 54
3-point goals: Bloomington South (Ennis 2, Nicholson, Weiler, Hulls)
Rebounds: Seymour 17 (Adams 4, Moore 3, Murphy 3), Bloomington South 25 (Hulls 9, Parker 7)
Turnovers: Seymour 19, Bloomington South 16
Fouls: Seymour 14, Bloomington South 16
Junior varsity
Seymour                  10 10 7 14—41
Bloomington South 2   3   9 5—19
Seymour (4-0): Logan Personett 12, Sidney Carr 8, Elsner 8, Gossett 7, Nicole Hoene 4, Paige Tormoehlen 2