Humboldt High’s girls were able to wash the taste of bitter defeat from their mouths Friday.
Iola High must wait a few more days.
The Lady Cubs limited Iola to three points in the second quarter and five in the third to take the lead for good.
The Fillies once again attempted a comeback, but it was too little and too late in a 37-29 defeat.
The loss comes in the third and final contest of a midseason, round-robin tournament for both teams.
“We needed that. Well, we needed that just to get through the weekend, Humboldt head coach Aubrey Jones joked. “It felt good and the girls were hungry after Thursday night. They felt like they let one slip away.”
Unlike Thursday, when the Lady Cubs went cold and scored only two points in the fourth quarter in a loss to St. Paul, Humboldt managed to keep its wits and secure the win with key defensive stops.
“Defense was a lot of that, and we talked about getting the 50-50 balls,” Jones said, pointing to one memorable sequence in the second half in which neither team could get possession of the ball while it was rolling along on the court like a bar of wet soap.
“We had Jada (Dangerfield) on the floor, we had Karley (Wools) on the floor, and we had Kirsten (Murrow) on the floor,” Jones aid. “We had everybody out there.”
Iola, whose early season schedule was disrupted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, is playing catchup in a hurry.
On top of the three tournament games this week, Iola will play four more times over the next week. If all goes as planned — no guarantees in the age of quarantines and postponements — the Fillies will have played seven games in 11 days.
The Fillies are slated to host Burlington on Monday, travel to West Franklin Tuesday, then return home on Friday and next Saturday against Chanute and Prairie View, respectively.
And they’ll need to do so with their offense still as cold as January allows.
“We’ve gotta get our whole team on the same page,” Fillies head coach Kelsey Larson said.
An Aysha Houk 3-pointer and a steal and layup from Lauryn Holloway gave Iola a 10-7 lead at the end of the first period, but Humboldt responded by holding the Fillies without a field goal for the first 7½ minutes of the second quarter.
The Lady Cubs’ Jessica Myers scored twice, Jada Dangerfield scored, and Isabelle Murrow’s field goal with about 50 seconds left in the half put the Lady Cubs on top, 17-11.
Holloway scored right before halftime, then Hannah Gardner converted a shot to open the third quarter, and suddenly Humboldt was down to 17-15.
