BASKETBALL: Lady Panthers share Ham-Co title
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[A 44-41 win over Zeigler-Royalton-Christopher gave Pinckneyville a 3-1 mark and a share of the 2011 Hamilton County Lady Foxes Invitational Tournament on Saturday night. Katelyn Mayer scored 17 points to lead the Lady Panthers and received All-Tournament honors for her efforts.
"I am really proud of our girls bringing home a share of the tournament championship," said PCHS head coach Alan Engelhardt. "We were by far the most inexperienced group heading into the tournament, but we did a good job of competing and brought home some hardware."
"Now that we have a few games under our belt, we need to get back to work and improve so we can continue to grow as a team and get better as the season progresses."
Mayer scored 58 points in her four games at the tournament and also led Pinckneyville in rebounding.
PCHS had a ten-point lead with two minutes to go in the third, but Z-R-C responded to tie things up early in the fourth, eventually going ahead by five. Heather McDaniel hit a big three pointer to get the offense going, and Mayer nailed crucial free throws down the stretch. The pair combined for 13 of Pinckneyville's 15 points in the final period of play.
"We did a great job of defending in the first half, taking away the dribble drive and getting ZRC into bad situations where they turned the ball over," Engelhardt said. "In the second half, we did a much better job of moving on offense and got some good looks in the paint off of post feeds and dribble drives."
Others in the scoring column on Saturday night for PCHS were McDaniel (12 points), Haley Simpson (9), Lindsey Winter (3), Haley Szczepanski (2) and Britney Thomas (1).
On Wednesday, the Lady Panthers won their second game of the tournament on a game-winning jumper with just five seconds to play by Simpson, holding on for a 37-36 victory over Hamilton County.
"We got off to a really good start, jumping out to a 10 to 0 lead with 5:45 to play in the first, but after that point, we got out of control on both the offensive and defensive ends trying to do too much," said Engelhardt.
"We came back out in the third quarter and really played good basketball for the entire period," he continued. "I think we tightened up a bit in the fourth quarter as this was the first tight varsity game for many of our girls, but this was a big win for an inexperienced team and we kept ourselves in the drivers seat."
Scoring for the Lady Panthers against the Lady Foxes were Mayer (11 points), Simpson (8), McDaniel (6), Winter (5), Dani Schoenbacher (3), Thomas (2) and Alyssa Hirsch (2).
Friday night, Pinckneyville tasted defeat at the hands of Fairfield 55-47 after getting off to a sluggish start.
"We dug ourselves a hole from the beginning that we couldn't climb out of," said Engelhardt. "We fought back from 10 down in the third quarter to tie it only to let it get back to 8 at the end of the quarter, and again in the fourth quarter, we got it back to even, but could never take the lead."
Mayer led PCHS again with 17 points, Hirsch and Winter each had 9. Also scoring was Thomas with 4 points, and Schoenbacher, McDaniel, Keelyn Stein, and Simpson with 2.
Pinckneyville (3-1) is at Carterville on Tuesday night.