In a low-scoring game to kick off the Gary Filbert Classic on Saturday morning, the Van-Far girls were proud more Lady Indians could come away with points.

Filbert Photos

Van-Far defeated Paris 35-26 in the first game at the Mexico Sports Complex, with five Lady Indians scoring by the game’s end. Mara Jensen led Van-Far (2-6) with 10 points along with her 14 rebounds and four steals. It wasn’t the massive scoring game the team has relied on her for to make them competitive, but that wasn’t necessary this time.

Carmen Wilburn was named the first Player of the Game of the day after finishing with nine points, six rebounds and two steals while running the Van-Far offense as the team’s point guard. She was in the score column early with six first-half points, which was also true for Dalana Gay — five points — and Madelynn Caldwell when they each hit 3-pointers to give Van-Far a 19-12 halftime lead.

“We rely on Mara to score a lot so we’ve been starting to work on more fundamentals and helping other kids get better scoring,” Van-Far head coach Heather Minter said. “A lot of kids stepped up and did a lot of good things for us. “We’ve been working on moving the ball more, and we’ve been doing a lot of shooting drills. We were working on the kids’ form and just tell them, ‘If you’re open, you’ve got to shoot the ball.’”

Paris (3-6) did have a 9-6 lead after one quarter thanks partly to a Kameron Arnett 3-pointer and Kennedy Ashenfelter bucket. In the final three quarters, the Lady Coyotes had four field goals, relying on an 8-for-14 performance on free throws for their points.

Paris head coach Garrett Thomas said Van-Far has more girls who were “more offensively skilled” than what Paris had. He also said that is as of right now because consistent work in the gym should help the Lady Coyotes improve so they can keep up when scores get higher.

“We were taking good shots, I thought, as they were open for the most part,” Thomas said. “We just weren’t able to convert. That’s been our story so far this season. We can hang with teams that can’t score very well.

“You’ve got to spend consistent time in the gym working on your shot form and getting better. Once the season starts, it’s hard to find that time sometimes. Hopefully, this Christmas break will be a good opportunity for us to get back to the gym a little bit and work on that.”

Reese Sutton led Paris with nine points and 10 rebounds, Sophia Crusha followed with six points, Emma Ashenfelter had nine rebounds, and Alyssa Webb pulled down six rebounds.

Paris whittled away at its deficit after Van-Far took its first lead at 11-9 halfway through the second quarter on a Caldwell 3-pointer and then took a 24-14 lead in the third quarter after a good Gay jumper. Sutton completed a 3-point play and then drained a 3-pointer to make it 25-20 Van-Far after three quarters and then Crusha brought the Lady Coyotes within two points at 25-23 after a 3-pointer almost two minutes deep into the fourth quarter.

Wilburn came through late with a 3-pointer to respond seconds later to begin a 10-3 Van-Far run in the game’s final minutes. That shot happened right after Wilburn herself ended Paris’ possession prematurely with a steal.

“Our man was bad so we had to go zone,” Minter said. “We were overplaying them, getting beat and then picking up extra fouls we shouldn’t have picked up. We probably should’ve went zone from the get-go.”

Other than the Crusha 3-pointer, Paris had three free-throw attempts but no other field goals in the fourth quarter. Still, Sutton, Emma Ashenfelter and Alyssa Webb fought for rebounds against the taller Jensen and McKenna Engh-Hoffman, who finished with seven points and three rebounds. The Lady Coyotes tended to swarm around Jensen whenever she touched the ball.

“Lack of effort is not a problem that we’ve got,” Thomas said. “We try really hard. We defend pretty well. I thought, defensively, we did a pretty solid job of stopping their better players in this game. Those girls don’t give up, and they play hard the entire time.”

Van-Far played at Community R-6 (7-2) on Tuesday night prior to facing Mexico (3-7) at 5 p.m. Dec. 30 in the Moberly Area Community College Shootout.
Paris plays La Plata (6-3) at 9:30 a.m. Dec. 29 in the Moberly Area Community College Shootout.