Monday's Girls Prep Basketball: Nashville Wins Early Mississippi Showdown

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Pinckneyville Community High School's Girls Basketball team saw its six-game winning streak crash to a halt Monday night.

River-to-River Conference rival handled the Lady Panthers a 51-30 defeat in Thomas Gymnasium to grab the early upper hand in Mississippi Division play.

PCHS hosts Sparta Saturday afternoon. The Lady Bulldogs are also 2-0 in the SIRR.

"The big thing for the girls is to not dwell on this game," Pinckneyville coach Alan Engelhardt said. "We have another big game against Sparta this week. We just hit shots and in the end that forced is into too much gambling to try and make up the gap."

Pinckneyville and Nashville played to a 10-10 stalemate after the first quarter. The Lady Panthers' last lead came early in the second quarter when Katrina Henson swished a three-pointer for a 13-12 advantage.

Nashville (6-1, 2-0), however, responded with an 8-0 spurt. A driving lay-in by Emily Miller just beat the halftime buzzer, slicing the Hornettes lead to 23-18 at intermission.

"I thought defensively we played pretty well in the first half," Engelhardt said. "We did a nice job of disrupting their interior offense and I thought we had good movement offensively. We just didn't hit many shots."

The second half was all Nashville. The Hornettes opened with a 10-0 run, ballooning the lead to 33-18 barely four minutes into the third quarter.

Pinckneyville pulled to within 11 (35-24) as the final frame began, but a 16-3 run sealed Nashville's victory.

Emily Miller topped PCHS by scoring 12 points. Henson added six and Maddy Keith five.

"Nashville is just so well-schooled on protecting the rim that they forced us into a perimeter offense. I really felt we like we competed all night and did some nice things defensively. Again we had some looks, they just didn't go down."

Jenna Morris (16), Jennifer Moeller (13) and Kourtney Heggemeier (11) were Nashville's top point-makers.