For the first time since the very first game of the season, a full strength Iola girls’ basketball squad took the court and just like that first game of the season, they won… big.
The Fillies took down Osawatomie 60-36 roughly a month after losing to them earlier this season. Now that team that lost to the Trojans was without senior starting point guard Colbi Riley. Friday, Riley was very much there, scoring 16 points.
“Colbi does such a good job of running our team and then everyone else got to play their position,” Carlson said. “That helped immensely. When kids are out, other ones have to slide over and play different roles.”
While the 16 that Riley had paired with the 16 that junior Ellie Carson grabbed off the bench was good, rising above her teammates was junior Madisyn Holloway who had 22 points doing everything from driving to the rim and hitting three bombs from outside the arc.
“She did a great job of anticipating the pass,” Carlson said of Holloway. “She took her shots when she was open and then she got to the rim and finished.”
The Fillies 60 points were the most they’ve scored this season by 11 points.
But what was just as impressive was the Fillies defensive effort. After leading by just two after the first quarter, Iola went on an 18-2 run in the second quarter to get out to that big lead.
“We were very aggressive,” Carlson said. “Our defense did a great job and our offense just kind of took off from that. I mean, I have no complaints. We’ve been working really hard on playing better defense blocking out and just being more aggressive. We took charge of the game from the start.”
With the win, Iola is now 3-4 and 2-2 in Pioneer League play. The Fillies will try to make it two-in-a-row for the first time this season when they travel to Wellsville (4-3, 2-1) next Friday.
“They get up and down the court and they have a couple really good guards,” Carlson said of the Lady Eagles. “We’ll need to bring the same defensive intensity that we did tonight.”
JV and Freshmen results
The freshmen girls lost to Osawatomie 22-19 in a three-quarter game. Hannah Gardner had 10 and Lauryn Holloway had seven.
Box Score
Iola (10-18-17-15—60) (2pt/3pt-FT-F-TP) Holloway 3/3-7-3-22, Carson 7/0-2-3-16, Riley 6/0-4-0-16, Moore 1/0-1-3-3, Sutterby 1/0-0-0-2, Bycroft 0/0-1-0-1, Gardner 0/0-0-2-0, Morrison 0/0-0-2-0, Bauer 0/0-0-2-0. TOTAL: 18/3-15-16-60.
Osawatomie (8-2-13-13—36) (2pt/3pt-FT-F-TP) Ballou 4/0-1-2-9, A. Lagasse 1/0-7-1-9, Shippy 3/1-0-3-9, Wallace 1/0-3-1-5, M. Lagasse 0/0-2-1-2, Seidl 1/0-0-1-2, Johnson 0/0-0-4-0, Booe 0/0-0-1, Hendrickson 0/0-0-2-0. TOTAL: 10/1-13-16-36.
