With the preseason portion of the 2023-24 varsity hoops schedule officially in the record books, the Aledo Ladycats opened the District 5-5A portion of the schedule with a 51-37 win over visiting Wichita Falls Rider on Tuesday, Dec. 12.
“Obviously, I feel good because it was a win, but it definitely pointed out some things that we need to work on,” Ladycats head coach Nikki Hyles said after the game. “Our inexperience showed a little bit with the type of defense that they had. It wasn’t like they put crazy pressure on us. We just made bad decisions. We’ll go back and look at that on film and we’ll get better from that.
“We’ve got a lot of great kids. They don’t wanna make mistakes and they don’t wanna do the wrong thing. So, we gotta show them the things that we would like to see and what they should do in the situations on film. Then we’ll get back in practice and re-create the same situation. Every team in the district is going to see this film, so we’re going to see it again,” she added.
After posting a dominant opening quarter where they went up 12-4, Aledo (12-7 overall) went shot-for-shot with the Lady Raiders in the second and third stanzas. Rider’s physically aggressive style of play caught the young Ladycats off guard, resulting in errant passes that turned into scoring opportunities at the other end of the floor for the Lady Raiders.
While they struggled to maintain possession of the ball in the second and third quarters, Aledo’s youth-ladened squad held their own on the home end of the floor. Wichita Falls Rider managed to close the gap on the scoreboard in the middle frames, but only ever so slightly.
Leading 36-30 as the fourth quarter got underway, Aledo posted their best eight minutes of the game to outpace the Lady Raiders, 15-7. The final offensive sprint by Aledo made an emphatic statement about the competitiveness of this team as their first district game came to a close.
The Lady Raiders opened the fourth quarter with a three-pointer just 40 seconds into the stanza to cut the lead to 36-33.
Elizabeth Griffin set up shop in three-point land near the Aledo bench on the ensuing possession. The Ladycats worked the ball around the perimeter, beating the defensive shift by just enough to give Griffin an open look at the basket before she buried a three-pointer of her own with 6:52 left in the game to push the lead back to six points, 39-33.
From there, a pair of trips to the charity stripe in a row for Aledo increased the lead for the home team. Natalie Anderson took a good foul that sent her to the hardwood where she slid into the wall. The padding on the wall did its job, as she popped up from the floor unscathed and went 1-for-2 from the charity stripe.
On the next possession, the Lady Raiders were called for a technical foul. Griffin knocked down both shots from the line to make it a 42-33 affair with just under five-and-a-half minutes remaining.
From there, Kinley Elms led the Ladycat offense to close out the night and send Rider home with a loss to go along with their long bus ride back to Wichita Falls. Elms dominated down in the paint, scoring seven of her eight points on the night in the final 4:52 of the contest.
“We had a great preseason,” Hyles said. “We played a lot of really tough teams to prepare us for this. I feel like we’re doing a good job. But, we just can’t be satisfied with being okay. We just gotta keep getting better. That’s what’s great about these kids. These kids, they’ve got that drive to get better, and they want to do the right thing. They want to get better. That’s the best thing about it, is they want to get better.”
With the Bearcats playing in the football 5A state championship at AT&T Stadium on Friday, the Ladycats’ hoops matchup against Northwest has been rescheduled for Saturday, Dec. 16 in Justin. Tipoff for that matchup with the Lady Texans is slated for 10:15 a.m.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | FINAL | |
| Aledo | 12 | 11 | 13 | 15 | 51 |
| Rider | 4 | 12 | 14 | 7 | 37 |
Aledo scoring: Elizabeth Griffin 16, Brooklyn Dempsey 11, Natalie Anderson 10, Kinley Elms 8, Ella Isbell 4, August Carlone 2.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here