Lady Indians win Stephens County title

The Comanche Lady Indians held off a late-surging Marlow team to win the Stephens County Basketball Tournament, 35-29, last Saturday at Central High.

Comanche enjoyed a double-digit lead heading into the final quarter, but the Lady Outlaws chipped away at the lead, coming within a basket twice in the fourth. The Lady Indians, however, went 5-for-6 down the stretch at the free-throw line to preserve the win.

“We had to work for that one and I think we knew it was going to be the case,” said Megan Robbins, head coach. “Marlow’s got a really good ballclub this year. They are in the top 20 like we are, so we knew it wasn’t going to be an easy ballgame, but I’m proud of our girls.”

Robbins said the Lady Indians had other tournament games like the one they played Saturday and it helped.

“(We’ve) had games like this where it went down to the wire and we had that experience and I think it helped keep us calm and be able to weather their comeback that they had towards the end,” Robbins said.

Gracee Miller was named the tournament MVP. Caity Blair and Kylie Roden were named to the all-tournament team and Kamry Rendon was named the recipient of the “Six Man Award.”

While Miller and Blair are veterans, it is the first year sophomore Kylie Roden has been in the starting line-up.

“She’s done a phenomenal job of buying into (what we’ve told her) since last year,” Robbins said. “We sat down and talked to her about getting in the weight room and getting stronger. We know that she can shoot it, but we needed her to add a little more to her game of being able to handle the physicality of what people were going to do against her.”

Miller, the team’s leading scorer, only scored four points against Marlow, but she was critical in other areas, according to her coach.

“Her scoring wasn’t going for her tonight but she had some key steals and I thought she did a great job defensively of getting down there and locking down one of their better players,” Robbins said. “That’s the thing about her, you’re going to get consistent effort from her every single night. No one is going to outwork her.”

No Comanche player finished in double digits, meaning the Lady Indians had to rely on their defense to get the push they needed to win.

“Our philosophy the whole year has been our defense,” Robbins said. “It creates our offense and we have talks about if our offense isn’t going then our defense is going to keep us in ballgames. And they’ve bought into that and that’s probably what I’m most proud of tonight is that they did a good job of limiting them to one shot at the basket most of the time and came up with some huge rebounds.”

Comanche led 10-4 at the end of the first and then outscored the Lady Outlaws 12-6 in the second to take a 22-10 lead.

The scoring slowed down in the third quarter for Comanche, who managed just four points, but the Lady Indians still maintained a 26-16 lead heading into the fourth quarter.

Marlow opened the fourth on a 9-2 run to cut the lead to 28-25, but a big basket on a short jumper by Roden with 2:27 left pushed the lead back out to five. The Lady Outlaws cut the lead to 30-27, but Blair hit two big free-throws to push it back to a two-possession game. They were Blair’s only points of the night, but they came at the most crucial time. The Lady Outlaws were not able to make it a one-possession game again as they Lady Indians closed out the win.

Scoring

Comanche (12-1): Kylie Roden, 9; Kenley Lemons, 6; Kynli Morris, 6; Gracee Miller, 4; Briannah Keeling, 2; Caity Blair, 2

Marlow (11-3): Whitney Wade, 11; Lyvia Bateman, 7; Dara Hunt, 5; Erin Doughty, 3; Kently Davis, 2; Korie Kizarr, 1