SEYMOUR
The start to senior night couldn’t have gone any better for the Seymour girls basketball team on Thursday night.
Holding Hoosier Hills Conference rival Columbus East to just one made field in the first 10 minutes and racing out to a 22-4 lead, it looked like they were well on their way to sending their lone senior, Aidan Hiester, out with a victory.
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Yet a second-quarter surge led by Olympian sophomore Koryn Greiwe brought them back within three at break, and later lifted them by the Owls for a 63-41 at Lloyd E. Scott Gymnasium.
Though the rebounding numbers and turnovers were equal through the first two periods, the Owls’ turnovers led to plenty of easy runouts for the Olympians.
Costly fouls also put the Olympians at the line 10 times in the first half. East went 8-for-10 from the charity stripe early to help cut into Owl lead. Greiwe was 6 of 8 during that span.
East coach Danny Brown was proud of the way his girls fought back after absorbing the Owls’ opening punch. He was especially pleased with his sophomore guard’s willingness to attack the basket.
“We weren’t attacking and that’s we needed to get back to,” he said. “We weren’t attacking before when it was 20-4, but we changed up our offense and defense and things started clicking for us.”
Greiwe led all scorers with 25 points and once she started seeing the ball go into the bucket, it spelled doom for the Owls.
In contrast, the Owls stopped hitting their shots after playing well from the jump for the first quarter and a half. Once they stopped scoring, the Owls let up according to coach Jason Longmeier.
“When they went to the zone, we got way too passive and we weren’t as aggressive as we need to be,” he said. “They started to make shots and you started to see our defense go down. I think for a quarter and a half, we played the best defense we could play.”
After the break, it didn’t get any easier for the Owls.
The Olympians, who shot 5-for-21 in the first half, all of a sudden couldn’t miss.
Draining 3-pointers whenever they took them and getting friendly bounces from the rim after it had denied them so many times before, it seemed the Olympians could do no wrong after a half of not being able to do anything right.
Brown explained that it was a definite tale of two halves.
“I got after them in the first quarter as I’m sure the whole gym heard,” Brown said. “ We changed up our defense, and from the time it was 20-4 we went on to outscore them 57-21.”
Grace Meyer led the way for the Owls with 22 points followed by Hiester, who was the only other double-digit scorer for the Owls with 10 points.
Alyssa Perry and Grace Schrader each scored four, Eliza Cash tallied three and Brooke Trinkle had two.
For Columbus East, in addition to Greiwe, they had seven other players score.
Kaitlyn Dougherty scored nine, Leah Bachmann had seven, Gabby Deam and Saige Stahl each scored five, Emma Jenkins scored four, Whitley Rankin had three and Kaitlyn Carothers rounded out the scoring with two.
In junior varsity action, the Olympians downed Seymour 46-30 thanks large in part to Columbus East outscoring the Owls 14-4 in the final period.
Eliza Cash led the Owls with 10 points while Brooke Trinkle added in eight. Lexi Morris and Lainey Jackson each scored three, while Cali Cummings and Kendrick Sterling scored two apiece.
The Owls return to action at home on Saturday against Class 3A power North Harrison at 1:30 p.m. Columbus East hosts Connorsville at 7:30 p.m.