Another slow start doomed the Fillies Friday night at rival Chanute as they fell on the road to the Lady Comets 60-48.
Iola, who falls to 4-8 on the year, just never seemed to be able to get it going on either end of the ball.
Both teams started ice cold with Chanute hitting the first bucket of the game nearly three minutes in. That started an 11-2 run for the Lady Comets that ended up serving as a theme for the game.
“We just played horrible on-the-ball defense,” head coach Becky Carlson said. “They were allowed too many drives which meant someone else had to step off and then Chanute would shoot threes. Offensively we can score around 40 a game. We can’t let someone have 60.”
Iola kept it within single digits for much of the first quarter but Chanute went on another run, this one 6-0, to start the second that really put the Fillies in a hole.
The Fillies were a leaky faucet, seemingly giving the ball away at any chance that they got, coughing up the ball 25 times throughout the game.
“They’re quick,” Carlson said. “I’m not going to take anything away from Chanute. They played well and I think they were quicker than what we thought they were. They had us frustrated at the start and we couldn’t play our way out of that.”
Despite their rough offensive play, the Fillies found some success late in the second quarter and into the third. They cut Chanute’s lead to eight by the half and got as close as 27-21 before the Lady Comets got things going again.
“When we moved the ball we got some good looks,” Carlson said. “But then we started standing and not coming to meet our passes. We got stagnant,”
Junior Ellie Carson was the lone double-figures getter with 11 points in the game.
The Fillies will try to regroup as they head back into league play next Tuesday when they take on a Santa Fe Trail team that won the preseason tournament Iola played in, however, the two teams never met.
“We played three good games again last week and there again we had another week off,” Carlson said. “Hopefully we’ll wake up. It wasn’t for lack of physical effort because we played hard. Mentally, we’re as good as we are sometimes.”
