After several rough offensive games for Iola, the Fillies managed to find their spark in Friday’s 48-35 win over Prairie View on Friday.
However if you just judged it by the half, you wouldn’t think it.
Iola led by just four and had only 19 points while holding the Buffalos to just 15. So things were good, but still, the offense struggled at times. And while the Fillies made some halftime adjustments, it was an adjustment that Prairie View made that seemed to be the difference.
“They went man and things started to click,” head coach Becky Carlson said. “Same thing happened when we played Sabetha. When they switched to man, we started to score. We’re still struggling to make baskets against a zone. But when they went man, they just couldn’t stop us.”
Iola went from up four at the half to double-digits in nearly no time at all. The Fillies were getting almost whatever they wanted and abused Prairie View at the rim getting basket after basket inside the lane.
“In the second half we were really aggressive when we went at the rim,” Carlson said. “I saw some really good things from lots of our kids. We were more aggressive and more confident and not as tentative, especially when we started going.”
Leading that charge was junior Madisyn Holloway who had 21 points in the win including three buckets from outside and several old-fashioned three-point plays
“She did what we needed,” Carlson said. “When she’s scoring it takes a lot of pressure off of Colbi to produce. She can focus on distributing. And then when they came out and guarded her after she drained a couple of threes, she started going to the rim and having success.”
The win comes just over a month after the Phillies beat Prairie View at home 37-35. Carlson said to attribute the change in final score to the fact that the Fillies are completely healthy, unlike back in December.
“When we played them, Colbi had just come back and Chloe was out,” Carlson said. “It’s just nice to have a full team. And that’s not taking away anything from everyone else on the team, but when you have your players in the roles they’re supposed to be in, then they play better. You could see it tonight.”
The Fillies will try to close out the tournament with a fifth-place finish when they take on the Independence girls at 3:10 p.m. today.
“We want to end with two wins in this tournament,” Carlson said. “So we want to pick up where we left off today. We want to be aggressive, that’s how we’ll win.”
Iola (10-9-13-16—48) (2pt/3pt-FT-F-TP) Holloway 5/3-2-1-21, Riley 2/0-3-3-7, Carson 3/0-0-2-6, Gardner 3/0-0-1-6, Shelby 1/0-2-2-4, Bycroft 1/0-0-1-7, Bauer 0/0-2-2-2, Sutterby 0/0-0-2-0, Morrison 0/0-0-1-0. TOTALS: 14/7-8-15-57.
Prairie View (10-5-4-16—35) (2pt/3pt-FT-F-TP) Aust 3/1-6-5-15, Davis 5/0-1-1-15, Kirkpatrick 1/0-2-3-4, Kerr 1/0-1-0-3, Kellerman 0/0-1-1-1, Walker 0/0-1-4-1. TOTALS: 10/1-12-16—35.
