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)