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Mt. Pleasant battles back, falls short to Danville
Panthers put together dominant second half, but can’t trump Bears
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
MT. PLEASANT — Danville was looking like it was going to run away in its 35-31 win over Mt. Pleasant on Monday night, but the Panthers gave the Bears everything they could muster.
After a competitive first six and a half minutes, in which the Panthers erased a 5-0 Bears lead and turned it into a one point game at 5-4, Danville took over.
Danville went on to scored seven unanswered to end the first quarter with a 12-4 lead. The scoring struggles for Mt. Pleasant continued into the second as the Panthers scored just four points once again.
That left the door open for Danville to build on its lead. The Bears delivered what was their largest point total of the night by quarter, 13 points.
At the half, the Panthers faced a 25-8 deficit.
However, the Panthers didn’t give up and slowly clawed their way back into it.
“I told them, we still have a chance to get back in this game,” Mt. Pleasant head coach Curt Watson said to the team at the half. “I said we have to take it one possession at a time. They really took that to heart.”
To kick off the third period, back-to-back buckets from Myah Starr and Alexa Fuller kicked off what was a 10-5 run through five minutes in the frame.
Through that span, the Panthers gave up just one field goal and allowed just two for the third quarter as a whole.
With just six ticks on the clock, a baseline jumper from Abby Carthey made it a 12 point game heading into the fourth, 32-20.
“I thought our fight was awesome in the second half,” Watson said. “We got after it. I said if we would have played like that in the first half we probably would have won. We really got after it defensively. We did a lot of good things in the second half.”
The Panthers continued their pace into the final quarter. Charice Auwerda gave the Panthers a spark off the bench and scored the first two buckets of the fourth to cut the Bear lead down to eight at 32-24.
Danville’s first points came from the foul line just over five minutes into the period. The Panthers played some tight knit defense, not giving the Bears single field goal in the final quarter.
While Danville didn’t score for a good chunk of the quarter, the Panthers went three minutes without points as well.
It wasn’t until a foul shot from Fuller at 2:34 kicked off what was a 5-0 run by the Panthers. Addison Clark scored a pair with just 1:35 remaining to make it a four point game at 33-29.
Fuller made it a three point game, 34-31, with 31 seconds left but the Bears hit a foul shot to make it a two possession game.
Time was not on the Panthers’ side though and the Bears hit just enough from the foul line down the stretch to pull out the win.
“I told the girls it we play like that and put four quarters together like we did in the second half tonight, we’re going to win a lot of game,” Watson said. “We believe we can get a lot of wins in the second half of the season.”
