Hot Handed Herington Downs bluebirds
Goessel’s Stephany Meyer shot 42% and put up 24 tonight, but nothing else would go in for the cold-shooting visitors at Herington. Madison Smith had two outstanding shots from beyond the arc to go 2 for 4. As a team, Goessel shot 25% from the floor and 14% from beyond the arc. Conversely, the home team’s efforts were totally “on the rails” as the Railers hit 6 threes and likely went over 40% on the night as a team. The resulting spread could even have been greater but the Railers hit only 13 of 26 free throw attempts against the Bluebirds’ 4 of 10. The Bluebirds have been plagued this year by the inability of others on the team to consistently find the hoop and a defense that sends opponents to the line in bunches.
The Bluebirds allowed the Railers to jump out to a 1-9 lead, getting beat twice on breaks to start. At 5:20 Madi Smith hit from the corner for the first of two monster threes for her. Meyer led the visiting ‘Birds back in with huge efforts down the floor, taking it to 10-12 and then Liz Alderfer caught a “long arc pass” from Porclein Unruh underneath and laid it in for the 12-12 tie. Goessel took its first and only lead 14-12 on a beautiful over the top shot from Smith to Meyer, but the Bluebirds got stuck at 14 for seven minutes.
With 4:37 left in the 2nd quarter, Meyer converted a turnover into a lay-in to stay at 16-25, and fans were given hope with another gorgeous Smith trey from way across US 77 to go to 19-25. Meyer got two charities and an inside post move, now against double or triple defenders. The 2nd quarter finished 11-14 and at the half it was 25-34.
Turnovers plagued the Bluebirds in the 3rd, as the Railers went on another run 0-9 and took it to 27-43. The only FG for the Blue was a nice Unruh toss to Meyer as the quarter wound down. Each team was playing with foul troubles but no one ended up fouling out of the contest.
Goessel lost each quarter tonight against the hot-handed Railers. On offense in the 4th quarter, the Bluebirds were only able to convert with inside pushes to a heavily guarded Meyer and the home team ran it to 32-55.
Meyer finished with 24 to lead all scorers. Madi Smith again put up two incredible threes tonight, finished with 6 and Liz Alderfer had one FG to round out the Bluebird scoring. Also in were: Raechel Boese, Kaleigh Guhr, Rebecca Sawyer, Liz Schmucker, Porclein Unruh, Chloe Smith, Racheal Zogleman and Bethany Herrel.
-Karl Brubaker
