BASKETBALL: Lady Panthers rip Red Bud in semifinals
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Pinckneyville hit five three-pointers in the opening quarter and got 23 points from Taylor Cicardi as the Lady Panthers pulled away from Red Bud 67-46 to move into Thursday night's Sparta Regional championship game with Nashville.
"We had post touches, we had dribble drives, and we hit a lot of shots in the first quarter," said PCHS head coach Alan Engelhardt. "All that is set up coming inside and going out with it, and when we play inside-out, we can do some things."
Maddy Keith, Lindsey Winter, Mo Ramsey and Katrina Henson all connected from downtown during a 25-17 first quarter for Pinckneyville. Cicardi had 8 points in the period.
Then things slowed down to a crawl.
After a Lady Musketeers' turnover with 6:35 to go in the half, the Lady Panthers decided to try to pull Red Bud out of their zone defense by holding the basketball out top. With neither team willing to budge, over three minutes ticked off before a Red Bud player was whistled for a foul.
The Lady Musketeers outscored Pinckneyville 9-3 in the period to trim the lead to 28-26.
"We weren't getting the ball inside then against the zone," said Engelhardt. "When the game flipped is when we started getting it inside, getting post touches and getting easy scores."
The pace picked back up in the third period as Cicardi went to work inside for nine points during an 11-2 Pinckneyville run that was capped off by her put-back with 4:17 on the clock.
"We came out ready to play against a zone, that's what helped us," Cicardi said following the victory. "We haven't played that good against it recently and we came out to play tonight."
Winter added another three and Keith scored 8 of her 17 points in the fourth quarter as the Lady Panthers held on to advance.
"Probably the biggest change was defensively we stopped some of that dribble penetration in the third and fourth quarters," Engelhardt said. "In the second quarter they tore us up on dribble penetration, on stick-backs, and things like that."
Winter added 9 points for PCHS, Henson 6, Ramsey 5, Dani Jenkel 4, Heather McDaniel 2 and Taylor Kuhnert 1.
Engelhardt and his team have their hands full on Thursday as they will meet a much-heralded Nashville team that handed them a lopsided home loss back on January 25.
"We've got to find a way to get the thing a little more up-tempo than what they want to play, and that's tough to do," said Engelhardt.
"It's a different style (of defense)," he continued, "Red Bud comes out and they guard you all over the place and we can attack that, it's spread out. Nashville's so big that they just kind of half-guard you, they kind of guard you on the perimeter, but they're always in the passing lanes."
"The bottom line is we've got to find a way to get it up and down, and if we've got an open shot we've got to take it."
Tip-off for Thursday's championship contest between the Lady Panthers (19-9) and the Hornettes (25-4) is set for 7:30 p.m.