BASKETBALL: Panthers fade down the stretch against Herrin

PINCKNEYVILLE, IL - For the second straight week, Pinckneyville let a second half lead slip away as they dropped their fourth game in their last six, falling to Herrin 49-39 at Thomas Gymnasium.

The Panthers were coming off a solid offensive effort on Friday night in a 67-45 win in their home opener over Anna-Jonesboro, but faced a tougher challenge with the Tigers' zone defense on Saturday.

"The 1-3-1 worked pretty well this weekend," said Herrin head coach Irv Lukens. "We got them out of rhythm. It was effective in the first half, we started getting in foul trouble so we went to man, which we didn't do bad in that one either. Then we made the switch back to (the 1-3-1) and I thought that really helped us, it got them out of sync and really got us moving."

The Panthers led by seven before losing at Carterville a week ago when they endured a 17-4 run by the Lions late in the second half. Pinckneyville was up 36-33 with 6:30 to go against Herrin, but the Tigers outscored them 16-3 the rest of the way by creating easy scoring opportunities with their defense.

"Against a 1-3-1 you have to play up the floor," said Panthers' head coach Bob Waggoner. "You have to be aggressive, its one of the things we emphasized today in our walk-through. We have a saying that pressure busts pipes, and their pressure busted our pipes."

"When the game was on the line, we had some poor turnovers that led to easy baskets. When you struggle scoring the basketball, you can't give up lay-ups. Give the credit to Herrin for forcing that, it's something we've got to continue to work on to get better."

Tiger centers Brendan Beasley (9), Alec Taitt (8) and Jonas Hogenschurz (4) combined for 21 points, taking advantage of some mis-matches in the paint.

"We wanted to get the ball inside, especially when they want to take stuff away from Justin (Lukens), they were really concentrating on him," Lukens said. "I thought they did a very good job on our pick and rolls and we got the ball where we needed to in order to score."

Despite the Panthers' lack of size, Waggoner felt the problems inside on defense were more the result of lack of execution.

"It wasn't really the size, it was the matchup," Waggoner said. "We had some kids that got lost defensively, gave up easy baskets and didn't rotate well. You have to have practice drills carry over into a game situation and we've not done very good with that."

Herrin led 29-24 early in the third quarter before a 12-4 spurt by the Panthers gave them the lead a minute and a half into the fourth period. Jerral Pirtle forced five Pinckneyville turnovers himself in the closing minutes as PCHS's offense sputtered down the stretch.

"I think the biggest issue is the fact that if you don't execute, the offense looks poor," said Waggoner. "Offense is harder to play than defense, your execution has to be better. We always talk about effort and execution, we gave pretty good effort tonight, but our execution has to get a lot better. Then the offense will be a lot smoother."

J. Lukens had 12 points to lead Herrin (3-5), Austin Butler had 6, Pirtle 5, Dylan Chrostoski 3 and DeVante Branch 2.

Pinckneyville was led by Dylan Hardin's 13 points, Chris Priebe added 12, Brandon Edwards 5, Luke Miller 4, Tristan Fisher 3 and Nolan Luke 2.

The Panthers got up 14-2 on A-J after the first quarter on Friday and were never seriously threatened the rest of the way. Priebe led all scorers with 23 points, Hardin added 9, Luke, Fisher and Sterling Bejma each had 7, Chaz Ruffino 5, Caleb Dahn 4, Edwards 3, Miller 2.

Luke was seeing his first action after recovering from an injury, and Fisher saw extended playing time in both games after being used sparingly the first few contests of the season.

"(Fisher is) doing a very good job for us," said Waggoner. "You have to keep working those younger kids and getting them that time and hopefully they keep improving."

The schedule doesn't get easier this week for PCHS (5-4, 1-1) as they host Mississippi Division leader Nashville on Friday night. Waterloo comes calling on Saturday.