No. 10 Pekin takes hold of North lead

WAPELLO - It's said that defense wins championships and it may have won a Southeast Iowa Super Conference North Division title for the Pekin Panthers.

There still is a lot of games left to play but Pekin and Wapello each have one loss in the league after the Panthers avenged a 57-51 home loss to Wapello in the third game of the boys basketball season with a commanding 49-34 win Tuesday.

In the girls game, Wapello scored a 44-39 win after losing at Pekin 43-22. The game puts Pekin's record at 7-8 overall and Wapello at 6-8. Both are 3-4 in the North.

Pekin is 11-1 in the North, 13-1 overall while Wapello is 9-1, 11-2.

Pekin was able to blow the game open and the defense is what ignited it. It was a phenomenal effort by the Panthers to hold Wapello to just 34 points in its own gym.

'They have an all-state caliber guard and a legendary coach and it was just great job,” Pekin head coach John Swanson said. 'We didn't do anything special except play Pekin basketball, which is defense, toughness and sharing the ball.”

The defense was especially important and led by Class 2A's leading shot-blocker in Braden Sobaski. Trailing 4-3, Sobaski swatted one away that set the tone for the evening.

'Whenever he gets a block, it motivates our defense,” said Brady Millikin, who scored 17 points for the Panthers. 'If you want to play for Pekin, you've got to get into it on defense.”

The Panthers have a goal in every quarter and that is to hold a team in single digits in scoring. The Panthers allowed double digits just once as their quarter leads were 11-10, 26-19 and 34-28.

To only allow six in the final frame was especially impressive and it may have happened because of an offensive play to start the quarter, which was actually triggered by the defense. After a rebound, Cael Lyle was all alone downcourt and converted an easy basket that prompted Wapello's Ken Spielbauer to call time with only 40 seconds elapsed.

'We wanted to come out and get the lead bigger, so that might mentally crush them,” Millikin said. 'When he called time, we knew we had them flustered.”

The play wasn't called, it was just a regular habit of the Panthers to get easy buckets.

Lyle finished with seven points, Chandler Stull 11, and Brock long nine. Maddox Griffin had 13 for the Indians.

'That's just what we do, we always look for it,” Millikin said. 'If you keep doing everything right over and over, eventually other teams are going to miss something and we are going to take it advantage of it.”

The Arrows took advantage of Pekin's girls, canning seven 3-pointers in its win.

'The last couple weeks we've been hitting those,” Wapello head girls coach Brandon Brown said. 'But we had to game plan for Kerrigan Pope, then (Erika) Coleman hurt us in the second quarter.”

Coleman hit three 3-pointers in the second quarter and three 2-pointers in the second half to finish with 15 points. Pope had 16, with the other seven Panthers totaling eight points. Tori Bohlen had 11 for the Arrows.

'We need to get more shooting from the outside and that's why I raised my voice a little bit,” Pekin head coach Davis Eidahl said. 'We were working on a new defense that I thought was good, but we need to close out on 3-pointers. We have to get everybody on the same page and get them to shoot when they're open.”

The game was very close with the quarter scores a point apart. Pekin's biggest lead was four but Wapello opened a seven-point lead in the fourth quarter and that's when the Panthers really started swarming on defense and got the lead to three but there wasn't enough time left.

The Wapello boys zone defense presented challenges for the Panthers that they met.

'We found enough holes and gaps in it to hit some threes, get to the line and manufacture some points,” Swanson said. 'We were able to slip away for a few fast break points.”

Pekin hit six threes in the first half and 4-of-4 free throws in the game.

'Talking and talking and talking,” Swanson said. 'Communication is why this was just a great team win all-around from defense, rebounding, offense, all of it.”

Every possession, the Panthers hounded the ballhandlers, defended screens and communicated constantly.

'Everyone did their job and filled their roles,” Millikin said. Our offense got a little shaky at times, but our defense never did.”