Lady Tigers go 0-2 in season debut

Thursday, November 15, 2012

The Mountain Home Lady Tigers opened their 2012-13 girls basketball season with non-conference losses to Timberline and Eagle.

Timberline 59, Mountain Home 52

The Mountain Home Lady Tigers showed promise of things to come in their season opening game against Timberline of Boise, losing to the Lady Wolves 59-52 in Lloyd Schiller Gymnasium Friday night.

Mountain Home battled the Lady Wolves the whole game, but trailed by three, 15-12, after a quarter, and 29-26 at the half.

The Lady Tigers fell farther behind in the third quarter as McKenna Butler scored 16 of her 28 points in the third to put Timberline up 46-41 heading into the fourth.

Mountain Home battled back in the fourth quarter to go up by three, with a little over four minutes left in the game, but forced some shots and fell behind and was forced to foul late in the game to try and get the ball back, coming up short, 59-52.

"Their one girl, the Boise transfer McKenna Butler, hurt us, especially in the third quarter," said Mountain Home Lady Tiger basketball coach Brent Keener. "She ended up with 28 points for the game, and I think she had about 16 in the third quarter when she couldn't miss. But other than that, we did a pretty good job. Everyone contributed, and everyone even scored -- that was a good thing."

Selena Foster and Teresa Fredell led the Lady Tigers in scoring, Foster posting a double-double with 15 points and 14 rebounds. Fredell netted 11 points. Marissa Streeter, Jacci Cristobal and Mattie Bennett each chipped in six points, and Missy Jessup, Whitney Sandberg, Madi Karst and Tessa Pachner all scored two points.

Eagle 64, Mountain Home 50

A slow start put Mountain Home in a hole they were unable to climb out of Saturday as they lost to Eagle at Eagle 64-50.

Mountain Home fell behind 15-6 after a quarter and trailed 36-24 at halftime. The Lady Tigers were able to cut the deficit to three midway through the third, but Eagle took advantage of transition baskets to build the lead back up to double digits, leading 51-38 after three.

Coach Keener thought the slow start hurt them against the Lady Mustangs.

"That was definitely the difference in the game," the coach said. "We got off to a slow start and were down early, and it was tough to battle back."

The Lady Tigers got back into it the game late, but Eagle made a couple of big shots, he added.

"The main thing with Eagle was we didn't hustle back fast enough and they killed us in transition the whole game," Keener said.

Teresa Fredell led the Lady Tigers in scoring with 13 points. Selena Foster added nine, Tessa Pachner eight, Mattie Bennett and Jacci Cristobal had five each, Missy Jessup and Whitney Sandberg both scored three, and Marissa Streeter and Madi Karst rounded out the scoring with two points each.

Mountain Home has this week off, returning to action Nov. 20 at home against Jerome. Coach Keener hopes the full week of practice will help his Lady Tigers find the win column against a Jerome team that may be down from past years.

"They don't really have that go-to girl like they've had in the past, so it's definitely a winnable game if we play well," the coach said. "We're going to use the week to focus on working on our defense so that we're not giving out 59 or 64 points a game. Offensively, I've been pretty pleased -- this early in the season to score 102 points in two games, isn't bad."

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