Taming the Tigers
Win puts ladies 6-3 in last nine games
By JARED PUTNAM

Candace Williams pushes the ball up the floor against Dawson.

Leslie Bittenbinder came up with 8 steals and 12 rebounds, while Lauren Dyer added a double-double of 13 points and 12 rebounds, helping the Lady Panthers defeat Dawson 41-36. It was the team's second win over the Lady Tigers this season.

"The player of the game was Leslie, by far," Head Coach Mike West explained. "She had tons of hustle plays that don't show up."

The team is now 2-1 in its last three subregion games, and 6-3 in the last nine games overall.

"I was really pleased with our defense," Coach West said. "But we just did not shoot the ball well at all. The team hit 9 of 50 from the floor, only 18 percent, and 51 percent from the free throw line. "It's hard to believe that you can turn the ball over 19 times, shoot 18 percent from the floor, and 51 percent from the line and still win the basketball game," the coach said. "Yet, we were winning pretty much the whole game. We just never could put them away because we couldn't make shots."

The game got off to a slow start as Dawson held a 3-2 lead until Kayla Gowder tied things up with a freethrow at the 3:02 mark in the first quarter. Dawson responded with a pair of baskets to take a 7-3 lead before Kaley Sullivan knocked down a three-pointer, cutting the lead to 7-6 with 1:45 remaining. Dyer grabbed an offensive rebound and put it in the hoop to give the Lady Panthers their first lead of the game before the end of the period.

Leslie Bittenbinder is knocked down as the ref signals one of Dawson's many fouls.

In the second quarter Gowder scored the first basket to widen the lead to 10-7. Dawson evened the score at 11- 11, but Dyer nailed a trey, Gowder hit a layup, and Bittenbinder hit a jump shot and a pair of freethrows in a 9-0 run that put Union on top 20-11.

Dawson hit a three with 44 seconds remaining before halftime, but made the mistake of fouling Candace Williams on a three-pointer with only 2.6 seconds on the clock. Williams hit two of her attempts from the charity stripe, giving the Lady Panthers a 22-14 lead at the break.

In the third quarter the Lady Panthers opened up their biggest lead of the night, a 27- 17 advantage on a trey by Williams, but were unable to score again in the period. The Lady Tigers shaved the lead back to 27-22 before the end of the quarter, then scored the first two baskets of the fourth quarter to cut Union's lead to 27-26.

Sarah Fulghum pressures the Dawson ballhandler.

Sullivan and Williams each hit a pair of freethrows, pushing the lead back to 31-26 with 6:06 left in the game. That five point advantage would end up being the margin of victory, as the Lady Tigers never got within fewer than four points of the Lady Panthers lead the rest of the game. Dawson had also been plagued by foul trouble all night long, and felt the effects in the final period, as three starters eventually fouled out of the game.

"We wanted to make sure we stayed all over their best player, and she only had 10 points and eventually fouled out. Their second leading scorer fouled out too," Coach West said. "We went inside against Dawson. It's not like we shouldn't have been to the freethrow line that many times. We should have been. We were going right at them and they did foul us."

Candace Williams is fouled on a three-pointer with only 2.6 seconds left in the first half.

The coach hopes that the team's shooting will come together in time for a postseason run. "Hopefully we will just have a few players get hot at the same time and we can go somewhere. We just have to shoot the ball better. With the exception of the Banks game we just haven't shot well," the coach said. "Teams have started playing us a little different, trying to make it so that Candace doesn't get good looks so [we're working on correcting that.] We're still shooting 64 percent from the freethrow line for the year, and for a girls high school basketball team, 64 percent is good."