Friday, Feb. 26, 2010

Rival East again tops South in regular-season finale

Top-ranked Falcons no longer undefeated

Two days earlier Olathe East's girls stubbed a toe at home against a Shawnee Mission South squad that finished the season six games below .500, so there was little doubt what Thursday would bring when the Hawks faced top-ranked and undefeated Olathe South, right?

After all, the Falcons won an early-season meeting in the Olathe South Girls Basketball Invitational championship by 35 points, but East seems to have some magic when it comes to the regular-season finale against its fiercest rival and once again waved that wand to conjure a 45-43 double-overtime victory.

“I know they beat us bad at the beginning of the year, but we needed to redeem ourselves. We're not the same team anymore,” junior Sanayika Shields said. “We had to come out strong and show that.”

The loss knocked South from the unbeaten ranks and forced them to share the Sunflower League championship with SM East.

“The girls came ready to play and came with some fight tonight,” Hawks coach Jeff Hulse said. “This game meant a lot to them, because it's a good rivalry game, but it's also a good win to catapult us into postseason play and show we can beat good teams.”

East, 13-7, served notice from the start that it wasn't going to roll over as it had in that Dec. 11 meeting. The message was delivered on defense in the form of a first-quarter shutout.

There's no real mystery to beating South, even though no team had done it before this season. The recipe really is the same for winning any basketball game.

First, it's critical to limit turnovers, which eliminates a big chunk of the Falcons' transition offense and chokes off their usual bounty of easy points. Check: the Hawks turned it over only nine times.

East also won the rebounding battle, got South's stars Natalie Knight and Kelsey Balcom in foul trouble and forced South to shoot jumpers instead of pounding the ball inside for another slew of easy points.

“Defensively, if we were going to beat tonight, it was going to be from 15 feet and out,” Hulse said. “We just played really smart on defense and were a little lucky they didn't shoot the ball well.”

And that's the final piece to the puzzle. Some teams do everything right, but don't get lucky and lose. But East caught South on a good night, a night when the Falcons shot a miserable 13 for 52 from the field — right at 25 percent — and missed their first 15 shots, including all 12 in the opening quarter.

“We were getting shots off, but we weren't hitting any of them and that happens,” said Balcom, who scored 17 with eight rebounds but only connected on three of 15 field-goal attempts. “We're basketball players and can have off games just like everyone else. It just happened that we all had an off game the same night, which kind of stinks, but Olathe East did a good job defensively.”

The Hawks stayed patient in a sagging 2-3 zone and gave the Falcons enough rope to hang themselves with a three-for-18 performance from three-point range.

“I was in awe (of our defense), because they are such a high-scoring team, but we were focused on playing defense first and offense second,” said senior Chelsea Harris, who scored a team-high 14 points with six boards. “We worked a lot on our zone and it paid off today.”

East, which has won three of the last four regular-season finales against the Falcons, led 7-0 after the first quarter and 15-11 at halftime. A buzzer-beater by Shields, who scored nine points with game-highs in rebounds (nine) and blocked shots (three), kept the Hawks in front 24-21 after the third quarter, but her charge late in regulation negated a potential game-winning basket.

South, 19-1, mismanaged its own potential game-winning possession at the end of the first overtime without Knight, who fouled out with 4:34 remaining in regulation.

Consecutive baskets by senior Darin Lewis and Harris, whose fourth-quarter three set a new Hawks career record (80), gave East the lead in double-overtime and a pair of free throws by sophomore Alyssa Palmer, who scored nine, iced the victory.

Fellow sophomore Kylie Gafford finished with seven points and seven rebounds for the Hawks.

“We know that we have to play like this every game now that the playoffs are here, so we have to try and keep this up,” Shields said.

While disappointing, the loss does little to diminish South's state-title ambition.

“It's a hard lesson, but it gets us prepared, because we haven't had a close game since December,” Bell said.

OLATHE EAST 45, OLATHE SOUTH 43 (2OT)

Olathe East (19-1, 10-1 SL): Alyssa Palmer 2-5 3-4 9, Kylie Gafford 2-4 3-6 7, Chelsea Harris 3-10 7-8 14, Katie Hannam 0-1 0-0 0, Sanayika Shields 2-6 5-7 9, Darin Lewis 2-4 1-2 5, Darci Miller 0-1 0-0 0, Emily Jorgenson 0-0 1-2 1, Lindsey Lyman 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 11-31 20-29 45.

Olathe South (13-7, 6-5 SL): Navia Palu 3-8 0-0 7, Kelsey Balcom 3-15 10-15 17, Ebonee Bell 1-6 0-0 3, Brooke Rinehart 2-9 0-0 4, Natalie Knight 2-6 4-4 8, Megan Balcom 2-7 0-0 4, Laura McKnight 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 13-52 14-19 43.

OE 7 8 9 9 5 7 — 45

OS 0 11 10 12 5 5 — 43

Three-point goals: OE 3-18 (Palu 1-1, K. Balcom 1-4, Knight 1-6, Knight 0-3, M. Balcom 0-4), OS 3-11 (Palmer 2-3, Harris 1-5, Gafford 0-1, Hannam 0-1, Lewis 0-1). Rebounds: OE 33 (Shields 9), OS 31 (K. Balcom 8). Assists: OE 7 (Gafford, Lewis 2), OS 9 (M. Balcom, Knight 3). Turnovers: OE 9, OS 4.

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