By T. Scott Boatright
It was all about the finish for Cedar Creek’s Lady Cougars Monday night in second-round action of the Division IV Select School girls basketball playoffs at the Brickhouse.
The Lady Cougars overcame a sluggish start to take control midway through the third quarter en route to a 47-25 win over Hanson Memorial to advance to the quarterfinals.
Both teams came out cold to start the game, with Cedar Creek outscoring the Lady Tigers 11-5 in the opening stanza. Hanson Memorial hit a 3-pointer right before the horn sounded to cut the Lady Cougars’ lead to six points heading into the second quarter.
Cedar Creek maintained as much as a five-point advantage with 2:08 remaining in the first half on an Allie Furr jumper, but the Lady Tigers roared back to score four points in the final 1:35 to cut the Lady Cougars’ lead to 19-18 at intermission.
Lady Cougars coach Gene Vandenlandenberg felt his team’s sluggish start was more about mentality than what was happening on the court itself.
“I think that happened because the girls knew it was their last game here and they were trying real hard, and it was kind of like, stuff gets in the way,” Vandenlandenberg said. “They were trying too hard, thinking too much. They didn’t settle down until we came back out to start the second half.”
So Vandenlandenberg sent a message to his team at halftime.
“I told them we needed to remember how to be a good team,” Vandenlandenberg said. “The way we played that second quarter, we were just an average team where you don’t put pressure on the ball, you let people get inside your defense and make layups. I told them we’re better than that so let’s play like that.”
He said he also focused on staying positive heading into the second half.
“I kept it positive because you don’t want them to get down and negative,” he said. “We were up one. We have a great chance to win this game. Let’s go out and play in the second half and get things done we wanted to get done in the first half — play our style of basketball.
“And we got some run outs. We got some fast breaks. I’m not going to be disappointed with a 22-point second round win against a team that’s won 20 games. They’ve got five or six seniors — four are starters. They were well-coached, and they hustled.”
Furr led Cedar Creek with 14 points while Lizzie McAdams added 12 with two 3-pointers and Olivia Underwood added 10, including a pair of treys.
Lillian Soto dominated the boards on both sides of the ball with all five of her points coming in the second half.
“She was playing too fast,” Vandenlandenberg said of Soto’s play in the first two quarters. “She did a great job of getting the ball. But I had to tell her that after grabbing it, slow it down and find an open shot. We weren’t rebounding well offensively in our last game, and we preached that for this game. So the efforts on the boards was good to see.”
Next up for Cedar Creek will be a quarterfinal contest at No. 2 seed Northwood-Lena, an 80-19 winner over Riverside Academy in its second round game.
“Northwood-Lena is a very good team,” Vandenlandenberg said. “But we’re 32 minutes away from the state tournament. So we’re just going to fight and play as hard as we can. Northwood-Lena is good, but I look for it to be a good game on Thursday night.
“We have a little momentum. I thought we responded well tonight in the third quarter. That could have gone either way, so it was good to get the win and move on.”
