ST. LEON
Coach Jason Longmeier said he didn’t have a special message for his Seymour girls’ basketball team at halftime of Fridays’ game against Rushville in the East Central Holiday Tournament.
He said the Owls took it up themselves to raise their level of play, and they turned an 18-16 halftime deficit into a 59-46 win in the battle for seventh place.
“I don’t know that it was necessarily a halftime message,” he said. “We just came out and we executed better.”
The Owls (8-8) opened the second half on a 13-0 run as Makenna Fee began the rally with a power move to the bucket, Grace Meyer had a basket and a free throw, Ashton Chase hit a 3-pointer, and Maddie Roark had a layup in the middle of the string and a 3-pointer at the 3:41 mark to make it a 29-18 game.
Roark, Chase and Fee had 3s later in the period as the Owls increased their lead to 41-28 going into the fourth, and both team added 18 points in that quarter.
“We made some shots and started playing with a little more attitude,” Longmeier said, as his team shot 11-for-19 in the second half. “In the third quarter we started knocking some shots in and allowed the gap to get out in front a little bit. If we would have kept them off the free throw line in the fourth quarter it would have been a bigger discrepancy.”
Roark came up with a steal and drove for a layup to put the Owls on top 50-34 with 4:09 remaining and the closest the Lions could get after that was 10 points in the final 30 seconds.
The Owls made 16 of 23 free throws for the game and 12 of 18 in the fourth quarter, while Rushville 14 for 21 for the game and 8 for 10 in the fourth period.
Roark and Chase each made three 3-pointers.
“Our team does a good job of finding (shooters). When we knock them down we’re better,” Longmeier said. “I thought the key to the game, and her stats aren’t going to show up on the stat sheet, but Megan (Ritz) was unbelievable defensively. The first time we played Rushville, (Allie) Smith scored 25. So we face-guarded her tonight and made sure she didn’t get the ball back and Megan held her to five points. Our defense was much better.”
Rushville shot 14-for-43 from the floor.
Roark scored a season-high 27 points.
“(Roark) made a lot of free throws (10 of 12) and she knocked down some open shots,” Longmeier said. “Maddie creates some problems for people. Maddie is quick and Maddie is strong, and she did a good job for us today.”
Fee finished with 12 points and Chase scored 11.
Longmeier said he liked the way his team hustled for loose balls.
“That was the most disappointing thing about (Thursday),” he said. “I didn’t feel like we went after those 50-50 balls the way we did today. That’s what we’ve got to figure out, how to play that way every game.
“I thought in the first half we played OK. We just didn’t finish, we didn’t score the basketball. We made few turnovers that were careless until the end of the game. We did a better job of taking care of the ball.”
The Owls finished with 12 turnovers, but only committed one in the third period when they shot 8-for-14 from the floor.
Taylor Browning topped the Lions (6-10) with 18 points.
The Owls will host Columbus East Thursday for a Hoosier Hills Conference game.
“Defensively we’ve got to be better,” Longmeier said. “We’ve got to be as good defensively as we were through three quarters today. I thought in the fourth quarter we fouled too much, but I thought defensively we were much better. In high school basketball a lot of people think you go as your offense goes, but I’m a firm believer that you go as your defense goes. Today our defense went pretty well.”