Teams playing the unbeaten Lewistown Lady Panthers have two choices, and neither have been good through 17 regular season games.
\nThe first is to grind out each offensive possession to slow the game down and limit the Lady Panthers\u2019 touches. But that means you\u2019d better make the few shots you take because there aren\u2019t many teams as effective transitioning from offense to defense as Lewistown.
\nThe other choice looks appealing when you see the Lady Panthers play defense: run with them and go shot-for-shot because you\u2019ll get open looks against Lewistown\u2019s defenders. That means you\u2019d better have between 60 and 70 points somewhere in the tank.
\nTyrone chose the latter last night in Mifflin County, and became the fifteenth of 17 opponents unable to hold the Lady Panthers under 60 points. Senior Jenny Cunningham scored a career-high 26 points as Lewistown throttled the Lady Eagles 82-41 to improve to 17-0 (8-0 Mountain Athletic Conference Section II).
\nThe Lady Panthers\u2019 82-point total was a season-high, after cracking the 70-point mark six times. Lewistown connected on 53 percent of its shots from the field and received scoring contributions from 11 different players.
\nNeedless to say, Tyrone\u2019s defense \u2013 a certain bright spot all season \u2013 was a concern for Lady Eagle coach Jim Swaney.
\n\u201cI\u2019m disappointed with our defense,\u201d said Swaney. \u201cWhen we don\u2019t score, we tend to break down in other areas. When we played them in Tyrone (a 60-44 loss), we dominated their guards, but we didn\u2019t do that tonight.\u201d
\nInstead, Lady Panther guards had a field day from the perimeter, combining for 39 points, and they were able to consistently knock down open outside shots when Tyrone collapsed on Lewistown\u2019s inside scoring tandem of Cunningham and Jenna Craig.
\nBrittany Stauffer led the Lady Panthers\u2019 guards with 14, after struggling against the Lady Eagles in December.
\nBut the success of the Lady Panthers\u2019 shooters was a direct result of the attention Tyrone paid to their posts. Along with Cunningham\u2019s career game, the 6-foot Craig added 14 points, and the duo dominated the glass on both ends of the floor.
\nTyrone (7-10, 2-7 MAC) shot just 27.5 percent from the field (16 for 58), including stretches in the first and second quarters when they missed nine and eight consecutive shots, respectively.
\n\u201cTheir defense doesn\u2019t take many shots away,\u201d said Swaney. \u201cWe had open looks but we shot very poorly. That\u2019s not to take anything away from Lewistown because they are very good.\u201d
\nCunningham and Craig combined to score all of Lewistown\u2019s 20 first quarter points as the Lady Panthers built a 14-point lead, but it was in the second quarter when Lewistown displayed the kind of shooting that earned it a spot in last year\u2019s PIAA Class AAA championship game. The Lady Panthers made 9 of 13 shots in the period, including a string of eight baskets in nine attempts during a 16-1 run that had them up 40-12 with 2:40 left in the first half.
\nUntil the fourth quarter, Tyrone was able to string together baskets on consecutive offensive possessions only once, and that came early in the first quarter when Hilary McNelis and Stefani Bryan made shots to tie the game at 4-4 at the 6:25 mark.
\nMcNelis led Tyrone with 16 points and five rebounds, while Emily McKenna added 12 points, but it wasn\u2019t nearly enough. Lewistown started the third quarter by running off eight in a row, and threw in a 12-0 run to start the fourth quarter for good measure.
\nUntil last night, Tyrone\u2019s single-game worst for points allowed had been 60, against the same Lady Panthers last month. Last night, Lewistown had 61 by the third quarter and never looked back.
\nLewistown 82 Tyrone 41
\nTYRONE \u2013 McKenna 4 3-4 12; Ingle 1 0-2 3; McNelis 7 2-2 16; Hoover 1 0-0 2; Bryan 2 0-0 5; Bradford 0 0-0 0; Roth 0 1-2 1; Turiano 0 0-0 0. TOTALS: 16 6-10 41
\nLEWISTOWN \u2013 Craig 7 0-0 14; Searer 3 0-0 6; Stauffer 6 0-0 14; Cunningham 11 4-6 26; Krepps 1 5-6 7; Spickler 1 0-0 2; Wilson 1 0-0 3; Kodish 1 0-0 2; Rhoades 2 0-0 5; Casner 0 1-2 1. TOTALS: 34 10-14 82 <\/p>\n
Score by Quarters
\n 1 2 3 4 T
\nTYRONE 7 9 10 15 \u201341
\nLEWIST 20 22 19 21 \u201382
\n3-POINT GOALS: Tyrone 3 (McKenna 1, Bryan 1, Ingle 1) Lewistown 4 (Stauffer 2, Wilson 1, Rhoades 1) <\/p>\n
JUNIOR VARSITY
\nTyrone\u2019s junior varsity team lost to the Panthers 63-31, despite a game-high 17 points from sophomore Liz Tepsic.
\nThe Lady Eagles fell behind 17-3 in the first quarter, and trailed 43-14 by halftime. Ten different players scored for Lewistown, while only four made Tyrone\u2019s scoring column.
\nLEWISTOWN 63 TYRONE 31
\nTYRONE \u2013 Tepsic 7 3-6 17; Turiano 3 0-0 7; Garbinsky 0 0-0 0; Christine 0 0-0 0; Russell 2 0-1 4; Walker 0 0-0 0; Corle 1 0-0 3; Bartlebaugh 0 0-0 0. TOTALS: 13 3-7 31
\nLEWISTOWN \u2013 King 3 0-0 8; Wilson 3 1-3 8; Rhoades 1 0-0 2; Smith 1 0-0 2; Wray 0 3-4 3; Pecht 3 2-2 8; Spickler 7 0-0 14; Zimmerman 3 0-0 6; Casner 3 4-5 10; Bobb 0 2-2 2. TOTALS: 24 12-16 63
\nScore by Quarters
\n 1 2 3 4 T
\n TYRONE 3 11 7 10 \u2013 31
\n LEWIS T 17 26 7 13 \u2013 63
\n 3-POINT GOALS: Tyrone 2 (Corle 1, Turiano 1) Lewistown 3 (King 2, Wilson 1) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Teams playing the unbeaten Lewistown Lady Panthers have two choices, and neither have been good through 17 regular season games. The first is to grind out each offensive possession to slow the game down and limit the Lady Panthers\u2019 touches. But that means you\u2019d better make the few shots you take because there aren\u2019t many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}