Iola Highs Fillies found themselves playing at a different level at times in their Friday night 63-39 road win over Praire View.
Throughout the first half, they scored at will, both inside and out, and defensively they held the Lady Buffalos to just one basket in the first quarter and a half of basketball.
Offensively we just used every tool that we had, head coach Becky Carlson said. In that first half, Im not sure if we could move the ball better than we did. Our ball movement just got us great, great looks at the basket.
The game plan defensively was to keep the Buffalos out of the paint as much as possible and hope that their shooters didnt get hot which they most didnt until it was much too late.
We wanted to stop their inside game and I think we did a great job of that, Carlson said. Now they also have a couple of girls who can knock down the three but they only got going after the game was decided.
The win moves the Fillies to 3-2 overall and evens their league record at 1-1.
Iola opened on a 7-0 run and never looked back, extending their lead to 15-2 by the end of the first quarter.
While rebounds piled up for Iola in the second quarter, so did the Fillies points. They stretched their lead to 21 with 5:55 left in the half, leading 24-3.
In that span, the Buffalos had scored a single lay-up and a free throw. That kept up until the 4:17 mark when Prairie Views offense started to get its act together. Even though the Fillies sat all but one of their starters throughout the final four minutes of the second quarter, Iola kept its 20-point lead well intact at
halftime.
The second half started strong and saw Iola move its lead briefly to 30 before the Buffalos started to chip away. The Fillies allowed Praire View to get within 20 briefly after opening the fourth quarter three points away from a 30 point lead and a running clock.
We werent quite as patient, Carlson said of their second-half play. That and we lost our focus a little bit. We just werent finishing our shots like we were in the first half.
Even with that, the Fillies now mostly second and third-string players were able to regroup and close out the game with a strong push to get their lead back to 20.
Junior Kelsey Morrison had a career night, scoring 19 points including three threes. Senior Ellie Carson had 13 points followed by senior Madisyn Holloway who had 10 to round out the double-figure scorers.
Senior Piper Moore had nine, sophomores Claudia Castellanos-Rodrigo and Becca Sprague each had five and junior Elysia Kunkler and sophomore Ellie Taylor each had a point.
The Fillies will face quite possibly their biggest test of the year so far when Iola travels to play St. Marys-Colgan in Pittsburg on Tuesday.
