Lady Tigers capture 7th game of season

CAMPBELLSBURG - The Crothersville coaches had a challenge for the players before Saturday afternoon's girls basketball game at West Washington.

"There were some very specific things we tried to get done team-wise," Tigers coach Andrew Nehrt said. "I think the main thing we saw in the first half was we challenged Kylie Hensley to rebound."

Hensley and her teammates responded.

Crothersville outrebounded West Washington 18-8 in the first half and led 29-13 at the break. Full-court pressure after the half threw off the Senators, and the Tigers went on to win their seventh game of the season 51-27.

Hensley finished the game with three points and seven rebounds, and Amber Lucas controlled the post with 15 points and 11 rebounds. Twelve of Brooke Prather's 20 points were from 3-point land.

Nehrt was pleased with the team's performance, and for Hensley meeting her challenge.

"We would like to get her to six, eight rebounds a game," Nehrt said. "She really responded well of what we asked her to do."

Play was a little slow in the first quarter as the teams combined for 7 of 21 from the field. But the Tigers pulled away in the second quarter outscoring the Senators 20-7. At the half, Prather had nine points and Lucas had eight.

"It's tough to play early on Saturday mornings and travel for an hour and then play," Nehrt said. "We talked having more intensity in the second half, and so we thought we would try and bring some intensity into the game by pressing a little bit. I don't know that we were that effective with our press, but it gave us a little more intensity and got us through the second half."

 The press may have worked as the Senators committed six turnovers in the third quarter. Lucas added seven more points, Prather had a 3-pointer and two free throws and Courtney Killey and Courtney Luedeman combined for three free throws to lead 42-19 after three.

Prather had five more points in the fourth and Killey had a field goal and two free throws to complete the Tigers' scoring. The Senators only put up 14 points in the second half.

"We switched defenses up quite a bit there in the second half, played man, played zone, played 2-3 zone, 3-2 zone and played some full court and played some diamond," Nehrt said. "We were trying to throw a bunch of different things at them, both to build some intensity on our side but also to keep them from getting into any kind of set rhythm on offense."

Leading the Senators was Molly Johnson with nine points.

The Tigers (7-3) will be back on the road tonight at Shawe Memorial (5-5). Crothersville defeated Shawe 78-66 in the Henryville tournament to kick off the season. The Tigers won that tournament.

"It's going to be a completely different basketball game," Nehrt said. "Very good basketball team, likes to run, push the ball up the floor a little bit. I guess the bright spot (of Saturday) was they got a chance to play today. We got a chance to come over and get a game in, and that's always good to kind of knock the rust off because we haven't played since the Medora game (last Monday)."

Crothersville is the only team in Jackson County to play tonight.

Box score

Crothersville 9 20 13 9-51
West Wash. 6 7 6 8-27
Crothersville (7-3): Schoenfelder 0-1 0-0 0, Sawyer 0-0 0-0 0, Luedeman 1-14 2-2 3, Killey 3-7 3-5 9, Hensley 1-9 0-0 3, Lucas 7-10 1-3 15, Prather 6-17 4-4 20, Hoskins 0-0 0-0 0, totals 18-58 10-14 51
West Washington (1-8): Johnson 4-13 0-0 9, Rosenbaum 0-1 0-2 0, Parks 0-1 0-0 0, Hundley 0-1 0-0 0, Nicholson 2-7 2-2 6, Fisher 2-6 1-2 5, Wise 0-0 0-0 0, Cahill 0-1 0-2 0, Popp 1-5 0-2 2, Creech 2-6 1-2 5, totals 9-41 4-12 27
3-point goals: C 5-21 (Prather 4, Hensley 1), WW 1-6 (Johnson 1)
Rebounds: C 31 (Lucas 11, Hensley 7, Killey 7), WW 24 (Fisher 7, Nicholson 5); Turnovers: C 16, WW 25; Fouls: C 10, WW 12