Lady Panthers win two league games

RBC | “Between our defense getting 21 steals which led to a lot of our scoring and our offense shooting 48 percent from the field, we were able to pull away from a very scrappy DeBeque team who was playing without two of their main players,” said Rangely girl’s basketball head coach Quinton Kent of Friday’s game against DeBeque, which the Panthers won 73-30.
Katelyn Brown led the scoring with 29 points. Brown had a perfect four for four from the three-point range and made nine out 10 free throws. She also had 11 steals, six assists and four rebounds.
“It was a great all-around performance for her,” Kent said.
Brown had plenty of help, too. Her sister, Kassidee Brown, was 50 percent from three-point range, making four three-pointers of her own to finish with 16 points. She also had 10 rebounds to finish with a double-double. Lindzey Thacker had eight points and 12 rebounds and everyone on the team scored.
“It was a good team win,” Kent said.
The team played North Park on Saturday, winning 44-28.
“North Park did a good job of forcing us to grind out the victory. We didn’t get as many transition baskets as we would have liked, but we were able to score enough and played well enough on the defensive end to come away with the victory. We turned the ball over 26 times, but to still hold them to under 30 points with that many turnovers said a lot about our defensive effort,” Kent said. “We always tell our players that offense will come and go, but if you play great defense, which should happen all the time, then we will be in games.”
Katelyn Brown and Lindzey Thacker led in scoring with 13 and 11 points respectively. Thacker and Katye Allred led in rebounds, which was a huge factor in the outcome. They team had 18 offensive rebounds, which often led to second chance points. Thacker had 10 defensive rebounds and nine offensive rebounds for a total of 19 rebounds. Allred had five offensive and seven defensive rebounds for a total of 12 total.
“That is huge when players get rebounds like that,” Kent said. “On the defensive end, it limited how many shots North Park got at the basket and on the offensive end, it gives us more chances to score and when you are shooting poorly, you need more chances. While not a pretty win—credit to North Park for that—it was a league win we are happy to have.”