Lady Cats bounce back with league win at Spring Hill

Louisburg sophomore Delaney Wright dives on the floor for a loose ball Wednesday during the Lady Cats’ win at Spring Hill High School.

SPRING HILL – Fresh off just its second setback of the season, the Louisburg girls basketball team wanted to make sure one loss didn’t turn into two.

Thanks to a big second half, the Lady Cats prevented that from happening.

Louisburg scored 32 points in the second half, including a 17-point fourth quarter and pulled away from Spring Hill, 56-42, on Wednesday at Spring Hill High School. It was a big road victory the Lady Cats were looking for as they improved to 6-2 on the season and 3-1 in Frontier League play.

“Spring Hill is a good team and they are well-coached,” Louisburg coach Shawn Lowry said. “The stuff they had prepared for us after they played a lot of games was really good. We always talk a lot about how we will respond to adversity, and not just in basketball, but in life as well.

“This was about them learning how to deal with when things don’t go your way. You can either dust yourself off and get up, or you can lay down. This group really took that to heart getting ready for this game and really all three levels did that. They all had great games and I was really proud of their effort.”

The Lady Cats faced a full-court pressure defense the entire night, but they were able to make their way through it and convert on the offensive end. If Louisburg didn’t score, it was able to draw a foul as it had 33 attempts at the free-throw line.

“We handled it better and Spring Hill has some athletes on their side as well,” Lowry said. “We did a pretty good job of handling their pressure for the most part and we were aggressive after we broke it. It wasn’t enough for us to just break it, we wanted to go score as well.”

Score they did.

Louisburg took a 24-16 halftime lead, but came out in the third quarter on a mission. The Lady Cats opened the second half on a 12-2 run to build a 16-point lead thanks to 3-pointers from Brooklyn Diederich and Megan Foote, along with a pair of baskets from Madilyn Melton and free throws from Alyse Moore.

Spring Hill eventually whittled Louisburg’s lead to five late in the third quarter, but the Lady Cats responded again in the fourth. Moore scored nine of the team’s 17 points in the frame as the Lady Cats built up its double digit lead and never looked back.

Moore led all scorers with 18 points and had five rebounds to go along with four steals. Melton also finished in double figures with 14 points and seven rebounds.

“We need them to be more for us and for them to demand it more and I thought they did some good things for us,” Lowry said of Moore and Melton. “We are going to look to them, but they have to put themselves into a position where we can get them the basketball. They can both be finishers and be tough to defend in the low post and they are getting better at it.”

Diederich added eight points in the winning effort with a team-high five assists and five steals, while Foote also had eight points, seven rebounds and four assists to help lead the Lady Cats.

On defense, the Lady Cats were active as they forced 30 turnovers and were able to score 20 points off those Spring Hill mistakes. They also recorded 20 steals.

“I liked what I saw from some of the younger kids,” Lowry said. “I thought Delaney Wright and Adyson Ross were solid. The older girls are pretty good about their rotations, but I thought those two were pretty active. Alyse is always all over the place.

“Overall, the girls were just really together and they played for each other. They knew it was an important one to bounce back from what happened against Frontenac. We learned a lot about ourselves.”

Louisburg will try and make it back-to-back league victories when it hosts Baldwin at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday in a make-up contest. Junior varsity will play at 1 p.m.

It will be the start of what is a busy two weeks for the Lady Cats as they will see plenty of tests come their way.

“We are going to have gauntlet coming up and it starts with Baldwin,” Lowry said. “Then we turn around and play three tournament games the next week and then we play Monday, Tuesday and Friday the following week. All of those games will be against great teams, but this is where we want to be. It is the meat of the season and tournament week is always a fun time.

“We are looking forward to Baldwin as well with it being a girls only night and all the teams get to play in the main gym. Our girls are looking forward to the challenge.”

LOU               10           14           15           17 – 56

SH                  7             9             17           9 – 42

LOUISBURG (6-2): Alyse Moore 5-9 8-14 18; Madilyn Melton 6-9 2-3 14; Brooklyn Diederich 3-9 0-2 8; Megan Foote 2-8 3-6 8; Delaney Wright 1-4 3-4 6; Haley Cain 0-4 2-4 2. Totals: 17-45 18-33 56. 3-point field goals: 4, (Diederich 2, Wright, Foote)

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