By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
Playing in the Stockton tournament championship game for the seventh year in a row, the El Dorado Springs girls basketball team clamped down defensively in the second half to earn a 45-30 win against Chadwick on Saturday evening––the third consecutive Stockton title for the Lady Bulldogs.
“There’s always been good competition and there for years it seemed we were playing Miller every year in the championship and now Chadwick the last two years,” El Dorado Springs coach Beau Swopes said. “We’ve had some success here, we’ve had some struggles here as well. The girls played pretty well tonight.”
The Bulldogs (10-5) entered the tournament without having won more than two games in a row all season against a tough schedule of opponents, but now head into their final 10 regular season contests riding a five-game winning streak.
They led Chadwick (10-4) by 8 after the first quarter and had a 19-13 advantage at the half. It was just a 2-point game (19-17) early in the third quarter after Chadwick’s Macy Landry scored on a jumper. El Dorado Springs’ Alexis Collins answered with a pair of 3-pointers––she made three of them in the third quarter––and a 3 by Neely Schaaf with 1:58 left capped a 14-2 run that made it a 33-19 game. The lead grew to 15 points after Collins’ last 3, but the Bulldogs still couldn’t rest easy.
Chadwick’s Emily Landry made a 3 with 10 seconds left in the third to cut it to 36-24, and the Lady Cardinals got within 38-30 with 4:32 left in the fourth after a layup from Macy Landry and two baskets from Rae Little.
But that was the last time the Cardinals would score––they missed shots on their next seven possessions as the Bulldogs ramped up the defensive intensity––and El Dorado’s Schaaf scored 6 points in the final minutes to help seal it.
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“Defensively we played pretty well,” Swopes said. “We were a little bit frustrated in that first half because shots weren’t going down. We just had to reiterate to the girls that it isn’t going to determine how we play. Defensively they stepped it up a little bit more and then of course shots started to fall in the second half and they put some smiles on their faces and all of a sudden the defensive intensity picked up a little bit. Defensively I think we’ve done a pretty good job this week playing the competition we have.”
The Bulldogs allowed just 19 points to Buffalo in the tournament opener, and then knocked off Marion C. Early 60-35 in the semifinals.
Chadwick coach James Pendergrass was certainly impressed.
“We played a really good defensive team tonight,” he said. “They made it very difficult on us. El Dorado Springs, their defense is really, really good and this was a great opportunity for our kids to play against one of the best teams in the state and when you have that opportunity it does nothing but make you better.”
“Everything about this tournament was positive for us,” Pendergrass said. “We’ve got three good teams in this tournament. We beat Miller and they’re one of the top Class 2 teams. And then obviously you want to be in the championship game and that’s where we were tonight. I’m really proud of our kids, it’s just going to do nothing but make us better.”
Little led Chadwick’s scoring with 15 points, Macy Landry scored 8, Ella Herd had 4 and Emily Landry finished with 3.
For El Dorado Springs, Schaaf led the way with 20 points, Collins scored 9, Avery Floyd scored 7, Allie Thompson and McKinli Mays each had 4 and Sage McCullough added a free throw.
“It definitely builds some confidence,” Swopes said. “We’ve had kind of a rough early part of the season with our schedule being as tough as it is. It definitely boosts our confidence getting some wins in a row but now we know we’ve got some big ones on the horizon with Skyline and Marshfield and I’m sure there’s somebody else I’m missing out there. We just play it one game at a time. Before this game I told them this is the most important game we’ve had this year because it was the one right in front of us. Now, the most important one is going to be Skyline on Tuesday.”
