Lady Panthers come off break slow, but show fight in near comeback against Chrisman

After a two week winter break to work on tuning up their fundamentals, the Park Hill South girls didn’t come out of the gate Monday night against William Chrisman like they wanted. An athletic and aggressive Chrisman team jumped out to an early lead that eventually led to a 29-11 halftime score. The combination of South’s poor shooting performance and Chrisman’s ability to convert on second chance points was tough to overcome for the Panthers in the first half.

“I think our first half we just played tentative and scared, not sure if it was the break or what,” Coach Jenny Orlowski said. “They (Chrisman) rebound very well; they kind of push up from behind the basket and position themselves real well.”

Down 18 points, Park Hill South had to change it up in the second half. While the general approach to stopping a fast team is to slow their pace down, it didn’t work in the first half for the Panthers. So they came out in the second half needing something different. With more pressure on the Bears, including a full-court man press, they forced pressure on Chrisman at every opportunity.

“We tried to slow the game down in the first half by staying back in the zone and it didn’t work very well, so when you’re down 18 points you have be a little more aggressive,” Orlowski said.

Initially, this also put more pressure on the weight of South’s young guards to prevent the margin from widening and the key bench players needed to run such a defense. Frustrating at first, the Panther defense stuck with it and slowly but surely narrowed the margin to 48-41 with less than four minutes to play in the game. Additionally, the shots began to fall as Tori Kerr and Stephanie Griffith’s timely scoring put the Panthers in a position to mount a comeback. Griffith converted 3 three-point plays in the fourth quarter as part of an impressive 19 point performance.

“Stephanie is a solid player for us, not real flashy, but gets things done when we need it,” Orlowski said of her senior guard.

As the seconds ticked off the clock, the momentum wasn’t quite enough as Chrisman took advantage of several late fast break layups to increase the final score to 63-47.

“A lot of our bench players really stepped up tonight, that’s what we want in broad terms of a total team effort,” Orlowski said.

While Monday was only the first game of 2011, South will be looking to build throughout the second half of the season upon the things they discussed over the break.

“We talked about turning things around and beating a team we’re not supposed to beat,” Orlowski said. “They can play with Chrisman, and they believed that in the second half. It’s about believing in themselves.”

The Panthers are now 3-6 on the year with home games against Belton on Thursday followed by Winnetonka on Monday.