BASKETBALL: Lady Indians hold off Pinckneyville, stay unbeaten
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[With neither team at full-strength, Tuesday's Perry County girls basketball showdown at Anders Gymnasium probably won't be much like the rematch in Herrin next Thursday night. However, that round-robin tournament game may have a tough time matching the excitement of Du Quoin's 39-34 victory over Pinckneyville, as the Lady Panthers fought back from down 16 in the third quarter to keep things interesting up until the final buzzer.
"That became a very difficult hole to climb out of," said PCHS girls head coach Alan Engelhardt. "You lose by five and you give up lay-ups on your first three possessions (of the second half) on turnovers, and that's what ends up being the difference."
"I thought the kids did a good job of battling, I commend our heart for fighting back."
For the Lady Indians, the victory was their twelfth in a row to start the 2011-12 season matching their total number of wins from 2010-11. Du Quoin also moved to 4-0 in the Southern Illinois River-to-River Conference Mississippi Division and kept pace with Nashville for the top spot.
"We've set a lot of goals as a group, and we're reaching them one at a time," Said Du Quoin head coach Shawn File. "The most important game is the next one, and that's been our theory all season long."
"I'm just really proud of the girls, they've done a great job. It's easy to coach them."
The Lady Indians led by ten at the break, 23-13, and forced turnovers on Pinckneyville's first three possessions of the third quarter which led to two lay-ups by Jessica Hirsch and a third by Rebekah Maddox, who was saddled with foul trouble for much of the evening.
"We thought if we checked her out she would go over-the-back, and I think three of her four were over-the-back fouls," Engelhardt said. "Credit (our) kids for following through and getting the checks on her."
When Maddox was out of the game, however, the Du Quoin offense spread out and gave Pinckneyville some matchup problems.
"Hirsch is such a good guard that you have to get some eyes on her and make sure doesn't get turned to the rim, and it changes some things with the floor spread like that," said Engelhardt.
While Taylor King and Alexis Kohrs picked up some of the scoring with nine points each, it was Kelsey Robinson filling the minutes voided by Maddox's absence.
"Sometimes people think we're a one or two person team, and we're not," File said. "It's all of us working collectively together, everybody steps up. Tonight, Kelsey Robinson played huge minutes, she played a bunch in the J-V game and came back (in the varsity game) when Maddox got into foul trouble - huge minutes."
The Lady Panthers fought back in the fourth quarter with a 7-1 spurt during which Alyssa Hirsch scored five points, and Lindsey Winter answered a Kohrs three-pointer with one of her own to make it 38-34 Du Quoin with just over three minutes to play.
Pinckneyville would get no closer though, as they struggled to commit enough fouls to stop the clock and force the Lady Indians to make free throws in the closing moments. The loss was PCHS's third in a row after a 7-1 start to the season.
J. Hirsch led DHS with 13 points, King and Kohrs each had 9, Maddox 4, Robinson and Kelsey Myers 2.
Katelyn Mayer was tops for Pinckneyville with 11 points, Winter had 7, A. Hirsch 5, Haley Simpson 3, and Dani Schoenbacher, Keelyn Stein, Britney Thomas and Alexis Anderson finished with 2 apiece. Mayer also had a game-high 9 rebounds.
Du Quoin continued to play without guard-forward Cassity Rice (injury), and Pinckneyville was missing point guard Heather McDaniel from their lineup for the second straight game.
Both the Lady Indians (12-0, 4-0) and Lady Panthers (7-4, 3-2) are off until Monday when they head to Herrin for Holiday Tournament action.
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