BLHS girls weathered by five-game losing streak

By Angelique McNaughton

January 29, 2013, 2:00 p.m.

Updated: January 30, 2013, 2:17 p.m.

Topeka — The Basehor-Linwood girls basketball team had a quick turnaround after falling, 45-38, to De Soto on Friday in overtime and lost a similar result on Saturday at Hayden, 51-27.

“We went into overtime the night before and with two back to back road games, while it’s not an excuse, I was pleased the way they responded,” BLHS coach Jason Tatkenhorst said.

Six players had four points apiece for the Bobcats on Saturday: Samantha Rutherford, Marriah Clayton, Kara Stephens, Jamie Johnson, Courtney Payne and Victoria Smith.

“It just came down to they put the ball in the hoop better than we did,” Tatkenhorst said.

From the field, the Bobcats went just 7 of 27 while the Wildcats went 20 of 33. The Wildcats took the lead in the first quarter, 14-7, and the Bobcats were never able to catch up.

Johnson received her third foul with 2:11 left in the first half, forcing Tatkenhorst to bench her. He was visibly frustrated with some of the officiating that put his players into foul trouble.

“We want to play aggressive but one negative of that is sometimes we’ll get into foul trouble,” Tatkenhorst said.

At the end of the third quarter, the Bobcats were down 39-20 and only scored seven points the rest of the game, including a three pointer from Johnson.

“I’ll tell you why we lost, we need to have girls score more points than that,” Tatkenhorst said. “We need to have girls getting double digits and that didn’t happen.”

Johnson only took four shots against Hayden, compared with the 15 she shot against De Soto. Tatkenhorst said he needs to get her to take more shots.

Stephens attributed the loss to a lack of cohesiveness and team unity.

“I think we need to come together as a team,” Stephens said. “We made a lot of simple, fundamental mistakes and had a loss of confidence and a loss of feeling as a team.”