GIRLS
Despite a dominant first quarter and a nip-and-tuck second, the Crest Lancers girls were not able to marshal the four quarters worth of steam needed to knock off the bigger, taller, more wiley Wildcats from Yates Center.
In the end, Yates Center quashed the Lancers 47-38 in Tuesday night’s action.
But, for Crest, it wasn’t for want of trying. It never is. For a team that boasts only six players when all hands are on deck, the Lancers are accustomed to making up in grit and stamina what they lack in depth.
Credit Lancers junior Regan Godderz, who administered a jolt of energy to the home team with six quick first-quarter points — one three-pointer, one two-pointer, and a free throw; basketball’s equivalent of the tasting menu — which gave Crest a 10-6 lead over the visiting Cats going into the second quarter. Godderz would go on to score 11 on the night.
With three minutes left in the first half, however, the Lancers defense began to fray. Yates Center forward Allie Pringle, a six-footer with a soft touch from anywhere, hit two turnaround jumpers in back-to-back possessions. And then she hit a third.
But Pringle’s teammate, Maddie Collins, wanted in on the action. Channeling her inner Ethel Merman — “Anything you can do, I can do better” — the next time down court, Collins, the sharp-shooting sophomore, squared her shoulders and drained a three-pointer from the corner. She pulled the trigger on another three the very next time down court: splash. Collins, who deposited six three-pointers last week against Marmaton Valley, ended Tuesday’s contest with five, and was the game’s leading scorer with 17 points.
Yates Center outscored the Lancers 19-7 in the second quarter and entered the locker room up by eight at the half.
Despite the hard-nosed second-half play of Crest junior Camryn Strickler and freshman Aubree Holloran — each of whom ended the night with nine points — Yates Center had too many weapons with which to contend.
In addition to Pringle’s inside play and Collins’s downtown prowess, the Wildcats benefited from the snaky dribble-drives of sophomore point guard Jaylee Catron, who added 14 points to the Wildcat win.
The Wildcats will attempt to keep the momentum rolling when they face Oswego on the road this Friday. Crest heads to Chetopa.
BOYS
Two of the most exciting players in the league faced off in Colony Tuesday night. For Crest, six-four junior Hayden Hermreck — long, athletic, with a quick first-step and a dextrous inside-out game. For Yates Center, six-three junior Aaron King — ditto.
The two stars traded buckets for the first eight minutes, each one finding new and balletic ways to get to the rim against the application of what proved to be fairly airtight defenses from both squads.
Hermreck was responsible for all of his team’s eight first-quarter points. King authored nine of the Cats’ first 11.
The nod, though, has to go Hermreck in the first half. The Lancers’ man-to-man defense and smothering on-ball guarding quieted the consistently prolific King, holding him to only four points in the second quarter.
Hermreck, on the other hand, continued apace — driving through traffic or pulling up in the lane — and added another eight points before halftime.
But, for Crest, it wasn’t to be. The Lancers’ wave crashed early in the third quarter. Wildcat coach Tanner Davis’s squad adjusted for Hermreck’s profuse talents and took to crowding the Lancers’ high-scorer to the point of suffocation.
“Credit Yates Center,” said Lancer head coach Travis Hermreck after the game. “In the second half, they took [Hayden] out of the game for the most part. I don’t even know how many he had in the second half [ed: 7 points]. At that point what we have to do is we have to stay relaxed and we can’t try to do things we can’t do. They put so much attention on him, that if we stay patient, we get other guys easy buckets. But if we go out and we try to create, we end up taking tough shots instead of getting easy buckets. And that’s what happened to us offensively.”
Hayden Hermreck ended the night with 23 points, the game’s leading scorer. Aaron King had 21.
On the defensive side, Coach Hermreck’s disappointment came in the form of his team’s lackluster help-side defense. “It’s a repeating story. We’re not stepping up and making plays like we should,” said Hermreck, who, when asked what his Lancers would work on in practice this week in preparation for their game in Chetopa on Friday, had only this to say: “Help-side defense, help-side defense. We may not do anything but that [Wednesday]. And, Thursday, we may not do anything but that on Thursday.”
But even Hermreck conceded that Crest’s defeat — final score: 56-35 — wasn’t to do, exclusively, with the softening of the Lancers’ defense. The King of Yates Center had his say. “The whole night we wanted to make it tough for [Aaron King] to catch the ball. And whenever he caught and drove, we knew we had to have help on him.
“But he’s a smart player. And when we took away the places where he normally gets his points, he went and got on the boards and got buckets that way, attacked when we were weak. That’s what smart players do.
“We played hard,” continued Hermreck. “Our kids competed and I’m proud of that. You look at 1A high school basketball, I’m happy with how hard we played, I’m happy with how we competed. From the technical side of it, though, we’ve got a lot of things we’ve got to improve on.
“But give it to Yates Center — they’re no joke.”
