Dec. 14—It took some time for Sequoyah girls basketball to find a groove in the opening round of the Sequoyah Invite, but once they found their groove they easily cruised to a big win.
The Lady Indians used a strong defense to propel their offense en route to a 63-31 win over the Ada Lady Cougars Thursday, Dec. 12. Allowing 31 points in the game, brought the Lady Indians’ points allowed average to 31.3 on the season.
Coming out of halftime, the Lady Indians defense wasn’t helping out the offense. That was until the Lady Indians hit a strong stretch around the five-minute mark. In a minute span, the Lady Indians capitalized on their press defense to get turnovers for easy baskets. SHS quickly went from 30 points to 41 points thanks to this stretch.
“I think that we didn’t try to take as many chances and we stayed in front of them more,” SHS head coach Justin Brown said. “Some of the same shots we were getting started to go in and that happens. They get a little nervous and excited to play, but they settled in.”
A big part of the Lady Indians success is how many bodies they can put on the court in any one game. Coming into the season, Brown thought the team’s depth was going to be a strength and through the early parts of the season, that is proving to be true.
During that span, the Lady Indians threw their whole roster on the court giving fresh legs to help stifle the Lady Cougars. During this stretch, the press defense proved to be so tight-knit that the Lady Indians forced a 10-second violation because AHS couldn’t get the ball past the half-court line.
“We played a lot of bodies in that stretch I think that’s important,” Brown said. “The style we play, we can wear people down. We try and rotate 10-12 kids in and get meaningful minutes out of them. I think we have some spurts where the other team breaks a little bit. We got to them, and our shots started falling. We can rotate 12 bodies in and stay fresh so we can play at a high energy level. That is a huge advantage, the other team has to work harder to just get open.”
Another advantage that results from the Lady Indians playing so many players is how they are able to get scoring from top-to-bottom. Out of 18 SHS players who touched the court, 14 finished with points. Julianna Davenport led the way with 13 points, Tylee Ford added 12 and Prairie Holmes added nine as the three leading scorers. Outside of that trio, three other Lady Indians made more than one shot.
With a variety of players scoring, the Lady Indians put up 59 or more points in each of their three games. This season the Lady Indians are averaging 63.6 points per game.
Picking up a 30-point win in the opening round was big for the Lady Indians. With a tough road to the championship in the Sequoyah Invite, Brown was thankful for a big win.
“It was important for us to take care of business in this one,” Brown said. “We wanted to get everyone in so we could save some legs, Salpulpa is a tough match-up.”
SHS wraps up the Sequoyah Invite on Saturday, Dec. 14. The Lady Cougars return to regular season play at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 17 at the Keys Lady Cougars.
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