GIRLS BASKETBALL: Lady Indians send Pinckneyville packing at Benton Regional
Du Quoin and Pinckneyville's varsity girls basketball squads met for the fourth time this season on Monday night, but unlike the previous three, each team's playoff lives were at stake.
The Lady Indians fought off several runs by the Lady Panthers, but led from start to finish and advanced to Tuesday's Benton Regional semifinals with a 47-38 victory, their tenth win of the season.
"We've won three of our last four, we've made it to ten wins, and that's huge for us," said DHS head coach Shawn File. "Now the goal is getting to eleven, which is going to be a tough task. Benton is a really good basketball team."
Du Quoin did it with their defense and rebounding, forcing turnovers and sticking back several second-chance opportunities at the offensive end.
"Those were the two big things that we had to look at tonight," said File. "Pinckneyville does a pretty good job in the half court, and we didn't want to get into that kind of game with them. Fortunately, we were able to switch defenses up here and there and just do enough to kind of confuse them. I was proud of the way we rebounded tonight, I thought we hit the boards pretty well."
The Lady Panthers had their chances to throughout the night to change the game's momentum, but every time they made a run at Du Quoin, the Lady Indians had an answer. One such instance came with three minutes to play in the game, when Pinckneyville's Caitie Opp hit a three-pointer to cut the lead down to six only for Du Quoin's Kate Smith to answer right back with a three of her own moments later, a dagger that pushed the Lady Indians' lead back to nine with time ticking away.
"We were running a little half court trap there, and our swinger didn't get out to the corner," said PCHS head coach Alan Engelhardt. "That happens. We hadn't worked on the half court trap a ton this year, and that's my fault, I need to prepare us a little bit more on different personnel and different situations."
"The bottom line is that we didn't handle the ball very well the entire night."
Du Quoin led by five at the half and had their biggest lead of the game at 31-20 with 3:33 to go in the third quarter when Pinckneyville came to life and made the fourth quarter interesting.
Mayci Doerflein stuck back a rebound, Andrea Morgan hit a three from the corner, and Sophie Keith put in a pair of free throws for PCHS to close out the period on a 7-0 run, but the Lady Panthers couldn't get any closer.
"They played smart," said Engelhardt, "when they got up they pulled it out and we couldn't sit back like we would prefer to do, we would prefer to pack it in the paint. When we had to chase, we were all out of whack and gave them a ton of stick-backs."
"I thought early on when the ball went inside, good things happened. They started collapsing on us in there and that's when we struggled to take care of the ball. If you're not getting shots, you're not going to score."
Smith (11 points) and Alaina Caldwell (10) were both in double figures for Du Quoin. Grace Haney added 9 points, Tarynn Mays had 6, Sadie Day 5, and Jordyn Bullar and Mackenzie Jackson each finished with 3.
Pinckneyville was led by Keelyn Stein's game-high 17 points. Keith (6), Doerflein (4), C. Opp (3), Morgan (3), Kearsten Opp (3) and Kaitlyn Goldman (2) also scored for the Lady Panthers, who finish their season with a record of 10-20.
Du Quoin (10-20) moves on to face the Regional host Rangerettes (23-3) on Tuesday night at 6:00 p.m. in Benton for the chance to play in Thursday's championship.