By Kary Booher
Mountain Grove, MO – It must be nice to have a 5-foot-11 center in small-school basketball. Just ask the Gainesville Lady Bulldogs.
After all, junior center Annie Noah threatened a double-double with a game-high 11 points and nine rebounds, with her second-quarter work propelling Gainesville to a 39-26 victory against the Houston Lady Tigers in a Tuesday quarterfinal of the Mountain Grove Tournament.
Noah’s importance was pretty simple. Top-seed Gainesville was only 2 of 18 on 3-point attempts, most of those misses coming in the first half as Houston employed a triangle-and-2 defense.
Wide-open 3s wouldn’t fall, but Noah managed to get offensive rebounds and get to the line.
“If I work harder, it’s easier for them (the guards) to get open,” Noah said. “I don’t care who the high scorer is, as long as we get in the win column.”
Gainesville took a 28-18 advantage in the break, thanks to asserting itself in the second quarter. The Lady Bulldogs were only 8 of 29 shooting from the field in the first half, but Noah scored all 11 of her points before halftime.
With it, Gainesville improved to 9-0 and advanced to a 5 p.m. semifinal Wednesday against No. 13 seed Plato, a 62-51 winner against Willow Springs.
“We’ve just got to get better at executing against a good defense. I thought Houston did a good job of guarding and that’s the way it should be,” Gainesville coach Morris Jenkins said. “I told our girls it was ugly, but we played well enough defensively and we made enough plays.”
Houston’s defense locked down on Noah after halftime, but the Lady Tigers had numerous empty possessions on their own end of the floor – mostly thanks to 18 turnovers.
Jaydin Ramsey and Abby Casper each contributed seven points for Houston, which trailed only 10-7 after the first quarter but couldn’t cut the deficit below 10 points from late in the first half on.
