Prep girls basketball: Lady Tigers lose 6th of 8 games, turn attention to WCC race

Following Thursday night’s 45-38 loss to Helias — their sixth loss in eight games — the Smith-Cotton Lady Tigers could hang their hats on one piece of good news: They could finally shift their focus to West Central Conference play.

Beginning with Wednesday’s matchup at O’Hara, the Lady Tigers will endure a five-game stretch against conference foes to end the regular season. And during that 12-day run the Lady Tigers will have an opportunity to sweep their recent struggles under the rug and recapture the form that led to their 9-3 start.

“If we play with the intensity we did tonight, we’ll put ourselves in position to win the conference, and that’s been our No. 1 goal from the beginning of the season.” Smith-Cotton coach Chris Parsons said.

While tied in the conference loss column with St. Pius X, Smith-Cotton’s 4-1 mark trails the 6-1 Warriors. Remaining on the  schedule for the Lady Tigers (11-9) are a road matchup with the Celtics, who they beat 54-20, home matchups against a Warrensburg squad that beat them 40-38 and a St. Pius X team they beat 38-35 to open the season, and road matchups against KC Center (a 64-41 S-C win) and Clinton, which in its first meeting with Smith-Cotton led the Lady Tigers by 17 before giving up a 20-0 run to end the game.

As for the big task of bouncing back from the troubling play of late, Parsons said his team can learn from the mistakes and move on.

“It’s been a rough stretch, but with the last two games, the effort’s been there and we got some of our offensive flow back,” said Parsons, whose team beat Versailles on Tuesday and was going for its first win streak since beating Nevada and Clinton back-to-back in late December and early January. “From here, we’ll focus the next couple of weeks on the conference and hopefully we’ll come out on top.”

The loss capped off a six-game homestand spread over 10 days for the Lady Tigers, who early on looked like they’d survive the hectic schedule with a 3-3 mark.

Jack Greer and Mallory Hamilton opened the game with back-to-back 3-pointers, and a putback by Elena Sharp stretched the Lady Tigers’ lead to 8-3 five minutes into the contest. The Lady Crusaders answered with a 6-0 run with a pair of baskets from Krista Haslag, who was one of three Helias players in double figures with 10 points, and two of Taylor Hagenhoff’s 14 points, but Smith-Cotton ended the frame with a Hamilton jumper and a pair of Lexi Hope free throws to lead 12-9.

“I think we came out with some pretty good intensity tonight against a pretty good ball team,” Parsons said.

Smith-Cotton, however, struggled in the second quarter, shooting just 3 of 10. Meanwhile, the Lady Crusaders found their offensive rhythm. Helias (12-5) shot 7 for 10 from the floor and Olivia Hackmann, who celebrated her 1,000th point in the third quarter, poured in six of her game-high 17 points to lift Helias to a 25-20 halftime lead.

“Some shots didn’t fall early and we had lots of open looks in the first half, but we just didn’t knock them down,” said Parsons, whose squad fell to 5-4 at home.

Out of the locker room, the shooting woes continued. Hope, whose team-high 12 points stretched her streak of scoring in double figures to 12 games, opened the half with 10 of the Lady Tigers’ first 12 points, but after trailing 35-27 headed into the fourth, they never got the score to within a possession.

Finishing the half 6 of 19 from the floor, giving them 33 percent for the game and 19 percent from beyond the arc, the Lady Tigers cut the lead to 38-34 in the waning minutes, but Hackmann answered with five-straight points and Hagenoff later iced the game with a pair of free throws.