Lady Indians take third at county

MARLOW - The Comanche Lady Indians used a strong second half against Velma-Alma on Saturday to take third place at the Stephens County Tournament with a 40-33 win.

It was a big win for the Lady Indians, who came into the tournament as the No. 6 seed and narrowly missed a chance to play for the championship with an overtime loss to Ryan in the semifinals.

“I’m proud of our girls, we played good as a team, we played close games and we won,” said Braydon Robinson, head coach. “We played a really good Ryan team and we were right there at the end, it just didn’t go our way. And then today, we played a good Velma team and got down early and found a way to battle back and get the win.”

It was bench players who gave the Lady Indians an early spark. The Lady Comets had bolted out to a 9-2 lead before Cassidy Smith and Cianna O’Connor got a couple of big buckets. Smith got her points on a putback off of an offensive rebound and O’Connor nailed a three-pointer to cut the lead to 9-7. Starting point guard Raelee Ellis got an old-fashioned three-point play that would give the Lady Indians the lead for the first time in the game at 10-9. It was a lead they would take into the second quarter.

“It was really encouraging (to get bench scoring) because at the beginning of the year, I felt like we were relying too much on the first five,” Robinson said. “Our bench has really improved and now they bring big energy for us off the bench.”

They would also get a spark in the fourth quarter from starting senior Jentry Whaley, who had been limited to just two points in the first three quarters on free throws. She would get her offense going in the final eight minutes, scoring seven points, including sinking 5-of-7 free throw attempts to help seal the win.

“She’s been our best scorer so she’s the focal point of the other teams’ scouting report on us,” Robinson said. “But the good thing about her is she’s a good team player, so when she’s not on, she’ll get the other girls going. At the end of the game, she found the ball and made free throws for us to put the game away.”

The coach also praised forward Drai Sparks for her performance in the paint.

“I thought she played really big inside and rebounded well,” Robinson said. “The post game is something we need to get going and we continue to preach to get it in the post and I thought Drai gave us some big baskets today.”

The teams went back and forth in the second quarter with two ties and three lead changes. Velma-Alma got a huge four-point play with one second left that gave the Lady Comets a 19-17 halftime lead.

After two more ties to open the third quarter, Comanche junior Jaylee Roebuck would put the Lady Indians ahead for good with a three-pointer with 5:27 to go breaking a 21-all tie. Comanche would lead by as many as eight points in the quarter before Velma-Alma closed the gap to five at the end.

The Lady Comets got within 33-31 in the final quarter at the 6:03 mark, but Whaley would get a three-point play to push the lead back out to five. The Lady Comets would get no closer than four points the rest of the way. Whaley scored all seven of Comanche’s points in the final 2:30.  

Whaley would later be named to the All-Tournament team. 

Senior Jillian Hushbeck received the Stephens County Athletic Association Scholar Athlete Award. 

Robinson thinks the tournament will help the team down the road.

“The thing we need to focus on right now is practice,” Robinson said. “We haven’t had a whole lot of practice time, so we now we actually can take some things we got from these first three weeks of January and kind of slow down. We will start putting some new things in for the playoffs and for our opponents.”