Pioneer

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

Mia McKaig Makenna Strycker Kynzie Hathaway

ROYAL CENTER — Nine days off could not cool the Pioneer girls basketball team’s momentum.

Mia McKaig hit four 3-pointers and scored 20 points, and Makenna Strycker had eight of her 14 points as part of a 13-0 first-half run as the Lady Panthers beat Taylor 57-35 in the first round of the Indiana Kitchen Classic at The Cage Monday.

Strycker added 14 rounds for a double-double, and she added nine assists and six steals. Kynzie Hathaway had six points and nine rebounds, and Avery Haselby had six off the bench.

Pioneer trailed 10-9 after one quarter, but they committed no turnovers in the second quarter while forcing eight Taylor giveaways. McKaig outscored the entire Taylor team 9-7 as the Lady Panthers built a 14-point halftime lead.

They went on another 10-0 run in the third quarter to get the lead to 43-22, and Taylor never got closer than 18 after that.

Pioneer won their fifth straight game to improve to 6-7. They will play Delphi, a 49-45 winner over North Montgomery, in the semifinals at 7 p.m. tonight. The other semifinal will feature Winamac playing Rossville.

Jallainah Harris scored 16 points for Taylor, who lost their seventh straight game and dropped to 2-12.

Pioneer committed 12 turnovers while Taylor had 28 as Pioneer derived offense from their defense.

“That was the plan from the beginning of the game,” Pioneer coach David McWherter said. “It was to put pressure on a couple of their girls but make sure we stayed back off number three (Harris) there a little bit. Make her be away from the ball and know where she’s at all the time as much as possible and force them into some easy buckets for us. … It took us a little while to get into the rhythm of it, and I thought the girls did a very good job though of being relaxed and eventually getting into that in the second quarter there.”

Harris had two steals and layups to give Taylor a 10-7 lead before Pioneer started their run. It started with a bucket from the left baseline from Strycker late in the first quarter.

Hathaway started the scoring in the second quarter when she put back her own miss. Strycker then scored six points in a span of 55 seconds, including a steal and layup and four free throws.

Strycker played catch with McKaig on the top of the key against the Taylor zone before McKaig lofted in a 3 to finish the run and make it 20-10.

“I think it took a couple games to figure out how to play as a team,” Hathaway said. “I think once we did start playing as a team, it just turned a lot better for our team. I think it just means we pick each other up, and we’re not tearing each other down. I think at the beginning, we were tearing each other down a little bit. And we’ve definitely picked each other up a lot more, and we’re encouraging, and instead of yelling, we’re helping each other. It’s been a lot better since the first couple games.”

Another McKaig trey made it 23-12 before Kiera Phelps hit a 3 from the left corner for the Lady Titans to cut the lead to eight.

But McKaig split a pair of free throws, and Julia McGrew tossed in a 3. A Michelle Harding short banker off a Haselby assist on an inbounds play got the lead to 29-15.

Strycker had an acrobatic coast-to-coast finish in the third quarter, making a shot in which she seemingly did not have a view of the rim. That kept the lead at 33-20.

“Obviously, we knew that if they were going to be in man that we were going to try to get her in a position where she could come off of her dribble, catch the ball and put it on the floor immediately and so forth,” McWherter said of Strycker. “Because we’ve worked on that in practice, and we knew that she could get some assists off that. … I know that she hung around and got some rebounds for us too there on the offensive side that were huge for us. … We challenged them a little bit before the game about the 50-50 balls because we’ve gotten beat the last couple games out against Triton and Caston on the 50-50 balls.”

Haselby scored twice in the third quarter in transition after hitting a five-footer off a Strycker feed. Hathaway added two baskets in the third quarter, including one on a putback and one on an inbounds play.

She thanked Strycker for encouraging her to shoot and McWherter for setting up drills in practice where she could work on finishing around the rim. She also called McKaig “the smartest person I know.”

“If you don’t have confidence, I don’t think you can play basketball,” Hathaway said. “Makenna probably has the most confidence of somebody that I’ve ever met, and I give her so much credit because she helps our team so much. But I think she’s a very good example of how much confidence really helps, and she’s helped me gain some confidence.”

Pioneer 57, Taylor 35

TAYLOR (35) (2-12)

Kiera Phelps 3 1-2 9, Ma’Leigha Smith 0 2-2 2, Jallainah Harris 7 2-4 16, Ceci Howard 1 0-0 2, Amelia Collins 2 0-0 4, Trinity Calvert 1 0-2 2, Vanessa Davidson 0 0-0 0

TEAM: 14 5-10 35

PIONEER (57) (6-7)

Makenna Strycker 5 4-5 14, Mia McKaig 7 2-4 20, Julia McGrew 2 0-0 5, Kynzie Hathaway 3 0-0 6, Hannah Zeigler 1 0-0 2, Avery Haselby 3 0-0 6, Madyson Shaffer 0 0-0 0, Michelle Harding 2 0-0 4, Leah Zeigler 0 0-0 0

TEAM: 23 6-9 57

Three-point field goals:

Taylor 2 (Phelps 2),

Pioneer 5 (McKaig 4, McGrew)

Total fouls: Taylor 14, Pioneer 13

Turnovers: Taylor 28, Pioneer 12

Score by quarters

Taylor 10 7 10 8 – 35

Pioneer 9 22 18 8 – 57