In a basketball doubleheader at Mehlville on Friday, the Fox girls threatened to surrender a rather sizeable advantage, while the boys attempted to stage a major comeback. In the end, the reviews were mixed, as the girls were able to hold on for a 61-55 win, while the boys dropped a 55-49 decision.
In the girls’ game, Fox turned a 20-14 halftime edge into a 40-28 lead early in the fourth quarter. But Mehlville, and its senior guard Maddie Horn, weren’t done. Horn, who would finish with a game-high 16 points for the Panthers, put on a ridiculous long-range shooting show over the final two quarters, nailing four bombs from 3-point range.
With the Fox lead trimmed to 43-38, back-to-back baskets by Sydney Adamec and Katelyn Drysdale stretched the Warriors’ lead to 47-38. Mehlville closed the gap to 47-44 before Fox struck again. A bucket by Adamec, and back-to-back scores by Abby Gierer, made it 53-45. The Panthers closed the gap again, whittling the margin down to four at 57-53, but a key 3-point play by Adamec, and a Gierer free throw, sealed Mehlville’s fate.
Adamec finished with a team-high 14 for the Warriors, who improved to 7-5 on the season. Gierer added 13, and Paige Pisoni had 12. Horn was the lone Panther in double digits, as Mehlville dropped to 3-9 on the season.
Going into the season, new head coach Matt Weber said that this Fox team, which has been almost completely revamped from the past few years, would need scoring efforts from multiple girls and that’s exactly what he’s getting.
“It’s a confidence thing,” Weber said. “It was good to win this one, having the game go down to the end, and see them face a little adversity in doing so. Mehlville was probably the scrappiest team we’ve faced all year, and it was nice to see our girls rise to the occasion in tough situations, after we had the big lead. Defense is what got us through there, and Sydney making that last big play to really seal the win.”
“We’ve really come together as a team, and just gotten better along the way,” said Drysdale, a senior forward, who is only one of three Warriors who got substantial playing time last season. “In close games like this one, it’s important to stay with it, and not give up in the end. Little things like that are what make our team great.”
The Fox boys trailed the Panthers 22-21 with just over two minutes to go in the second quarter before Mehlville’s King Waller took over. Waller, a sophomore who scored 29 in last year’s game, fueled a 10-0 run by scoring eight of those points, allowing the Panthers to take a 32-21 lead to the locker room.
But, much like the Mehlville girls showed in the early contest, Fox wasn’t about to roll over. Senior forward Chase Waters scored seven straight points between the end of the third quarter and the start of the fourth, cutting a 40-30 deficit down to 40-37.
Mehlville (9-5) kept building the lead back up, getting it to 52-42, before Dalton Evans drained a 3-pointer, Curtis McQueen scored inside and Damarion Jones, who transferred to Fox from Mehlville, nailed a long-range bomb to close the lead to 52-49. But the Warriors ran out of fight at that point and fell to 3-10 on the season.
In addition to Waller’s 18 points for the Panthers, both Dylan Branson and Jaylan Valentine scored 10. Evans led Fox with 11 points, followed by Waters (9) and Jones (8).
“We talked in the locker room (at the half), and told them they needed to play as hard as we possibly could,” Fox head coach Mike Wilken said, explaining the comeback over the final two quarters. “But we’ve got to take care of details in order to win games, and we missed a few of those.
“We kind of fought our way back from starting out down 7-0, and had that run, but Waller found a way to make his run at the end of the first half. In the second half, when you’re trying to come back from being down 10 or more, I thought our guys played extremely hard. Dalton and Cole (Elwood) were more patient, which got Chase more looks inside, and that’s what we need out of him.”
Meanwhile Weber wasn’t happy with a close loss to Festus in the first game back from the holiday hiatus, and realized the Mehlville game could have gotten away as well.
“That’s about the (Christmas) break,” Weber said. “It’s about not doing anything (game-wise) for three weeks. You can bet we’ll be somewhere (playing in somebody’s tournament) next season during the break.”