Neither Community R-6 or Paris girls basketball has a defensive average above 40 points.
Community R-6 at Paris Photo Gallery
The Lady Coyotes managed to scrounge enough points on Friday …
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Neither Community R-6 or Paris girls basketball has a defensive average above 40 points.
Community R-6 at Paris Photo Gallery
The Lady Coyotes managed to scrounge enough points on Friday during their Courtwarming in Paris in a 44-35 win over Community. The Lady Trojans scored only 12 points in the second and third quarters and had Paris steal the ball away 11 times.
Paris head coach Garrett Thomas said it wasn’t a good start for the Lady Coyotes (12-6) as they allowed the first seven points and trailed 12-6 after one quarter. When they made some defensive adjustments, the Lady Coyotes took their first lead with less than one minute left in the first half on a Melanie Moore layup.
“We started off running some man stuff, and they just torched it,” Thomas said. “We had to choose something different pretty quick because I didn’t have confidence that we could wait and figure it out so we switched to a zone.”
Thomas said Community (12-4) is always a team that “causes you to think constantly” with how well the Lady Trojans run their offensive sets. This speaks to how well he thought Paris ran that zone defense to take away all types of shots from Community.
Not only were shots taken away from the Lady Trojans, Community head coach Bob Curtis said shots sometimes didn’t even happen. The ball was thrown to a Lady Coyote instead as Paris eventually built a lead as big as 10 points.
“It was hard for us to put it in the basket the rest of the way,” Curtis said. “Make no mistake, the turnovers killed us. We actually would guard and play really good defense and get a stop and then fly down in transition and turn the ball over to somebody who wasn’t open.”
Curtis said Community was too “frustrated” and kept making those mistakes going into traffic. Point guard Peyton Beamer had a better scoring second half with 11 of her 12 points in the latter two quarters, including two 3-pointers.
Aaliyah Welch gave the Lady Trojans some hope in the fourth quarter as they cut the Paris lead to 31-28 on a 3-pointer. She had a couple of field goals in the fourth to amount to nine points in the game but along with four personal fouls. Jocelyn Curtis had all nine of her points in the first half, and Chloe Johnson had a team-high seven rebounds.
“We should’ve got a better shot every time down the floor and just didn’t choose to do that in the second half,” Curtis said. “We cut it to three and then really didn’t have quality possessions after that. The effort was there, but it wasn’t possessions that we needed down the stretch.”
Reese Sutton led Paris with 14 points and eight rebounds, and Alyssa Webb had 10 points and six rebounds for a strong one-two post punch for the Lady Coyotes. Moore finished with eight points and four steals.
Thomas said the adjustments didn’t stop for Paris after switching to a zone defense. Unlike previous seasons with younger players, he said the girls can iron out weaknesses better during a game.
“When they would figure out a hole, we were able to fix that hole before things got bad,” Thomas said. “That’s a credit to coaching older girls. In the past, we’ve had so much youth that when somebody exposed a problem, we weren’t able to adjust quick enough to stay in the game.”
Sutton and the Courtwarming Queen Webb took turns scoring inside, especially in the second half. Other girls passed to one of them cutting to the rim or they would feed each other to widen the Paris lead.
Thomas said this offensive strategy is new for the Lady Coyotes in the sense they haven’t really tried to pound the ball inside with both post players before. The first night trying this against Community seemed to be a success, and Thomas joked he wished he figured it out sooner.
“We’ve had to emphasize getting the ball inside. That’s been a weakness of ours in the first half of the season,” Thomas said. “We had to change something recently to try and pick up some offensive production. When you’re trying to guard both of them continuously, it wears on you. They both do a pretty good job being physical and posting up and both are pretty solid passers to each other inside.”
Both teams have the Sturgeon Tournament this week that will take them into the final month of the regular season in February, which also contains districts.
Curtis has liked his defense up to this point and believed it did well against Paris, but the offense couldn’t match its level. The Lady Trojans have nine victories which involved allowing less than 30 points but wants more on the offensive end.
“We’ve got to score more,” Curtis said. “We’ve got to get closer to 50 so we can make some mistakes. The girls are playing hard and playing well, but we definitely can be more efficient offensively.”
Thomas said he likes how Paris can change its defense during a game and still be “one of the best around.” However, he wants offense to become easier for the Lady Coyotes going into the final month.
“Our general focus is trying to change how we look offensively by utilizing our girls who have been playing the best recently,” Thomas said. “Going forward, when teams adjust to our two-post offense, we’re going to have to find the next thing. We can’t be one-dimensional.”