After starting the season with a nine-game winning streak, the Greenwood Lady Bulldogs finally lost last weekend, but the setback will only make them better, said Head Coach Clay Reeves. Of course, the loss wasn’t to just any team – it was to Little Rock Hall, a traditional basketball powerhouse for many years – avenging an earlier defeat by Greenwood on November 18th.
The Lady Bulldogs opened their season on the road with a 60-56 win at Hall, giving them a shot of confidence that helped them sail through the first half of their non-conference schedule, winning most games in blowout fashion. In fact, Hall is the only team that’s even been close to the Lady Bulldogs, and it required a poor performance by Greenwood and an overtime period for Hall to win.
The game was played as part of a tournament at Conway last week in which the GHS girls earned lopsided victories over Searcy and Springdale before advancing to meet Hall. Greenwood eased past the Lady Lions of Searcy (69-47) before overwhelming the Springdale girls (60-19).
The Lady Bulldogs led 18-10 after one period and 43-20 at the half against Searcy. An even bigger third quarter saw the lead balloon to 30 points at 67-37 before Coach Reeves pulled his starters and coasted to the 22-point victory.
As she has done in almost every game this season, senior guard Megan Hartness led the Lady Bulldogs in scoring with 28 points. She was ably assisted by senior forward Sarah Elkins with 18 points and junior guard Maddie Goodner with 11 points.
Springdale was almost helpless against Greenwood’s pressure defense and quick-strike offense, trailing 19-4 after eight minutes and 33-11 at the half. Ahead 51-16 at the end of the third quarter, the GHS girls cleared their bench and rolled to the 41-point win behind the 29-point performance of Hartness, with 10 points from Elkins.
Against Hall, the Lady Bulldogs took a slight early lead, but could never pull away. Up 10-9 after one period, Greenwood outscored Hall 16-11 in the second quarter to lead 26-20 at the break. Both teams scored 16 points in the third period to keep the margin at six, but as all good teams do, Hall made a run in the fourth quarter, scoring 24 points and tying the game at 60-all in the final seconds, forcing the overtime. Hall continued its momentum into the extra period, outscoring Greenwood 14-10 for the win.
Megan Hartness was targeted throughout the game by Hall’s defense, but still managed to score 19 points, the same number scored by senior teammate Brittany Branum. Maddie Goodner contributed 12 points in the game as the GHS girls suffered their first loss of the season.
“I’ve seen a lot of good things and we’ve continually improved,” said Coach Reeves after the loss, summing up the season so far. “But I knew there were still a lot of things for us to improve on. We see it and talk about it daily, but until those things are exposed in a game, sometimes you don’t realize it until you actually see it.
“The good thing about playing Hall for the second time is that they exposed some things that we had talked about and worked on, but we hadn’t stepped it up to the next level, because it hadn’t hurt us in a game,” he said. “The Hall game will help us tremendously from watching the film. It will help to correct those mistakes.
‘We didn’t play well offensively,” explained Reeves. “We didn’t shoot very well or play with very good rhythm, and we still scored 70 points. But my outlook is that we played very average against Hall and it took an overtime for them to beat us.
And I think they’re one of the best 6A teams in the state, and I think they played extremely well. So there are only positives that come out of this game for me as a coach. I know what we’re capable of being, but I knew that before the Hall game.
“When they made the push at us at the end, we just didn’t adjust and respond the way that we are used to responding, and that’s the first [team] that’s had the opportunity to come at us like that at the end. But when things aren’t going good, you’ve got to put that behind you and keep moving forward,” said Reeves. “We dropped our heads a little bit, but this is the game we needed to help us learn from those mistakes,” he added.
“That’s why we play the great teams. We don’t worry about the wins and losses right now. We worry about playing great competition and learning from those things. Our kids have just played pretty well against some really good teams, and the games haven’t been close. I’m happy that they’ve responded and played [well] and not allowed [teams] to stay close to them, but eventually good teams will stay close or beat you. So we’ll learn from that and grow up a lot. I think it woke us up and we’re going to get a lot better from it.”
So overall, Reeves is very pleased with where his team is at this point in the season. “We’ve steadily gotten better and a lot of players have stepped up. We’ve got a lot of really good players and they all have strengths. At different times different players are going to step up in different areas, depending on what the other team is trying to [do]. We’re blessed that we’ve got really good players that can step up in those situations.”
As for the conference season that starts in January, the coach pointed to Conway as the team to beat in the 7A/6A Central. The Lady Wampus Cats are the defending 7A state champs and have most of their team returning intact. Class 6A Russellville also has most of their players back from last season. Other 7A teams in the conference include Mt. St. Mary’s, Bryant, and Van Buren.
Along with Russellville, league newcomers Alma and Siloam Springs will round out the other 6A teams that will battle with Greenwood for three post-season berths. Alma is playing its first season on the 6A level, but has been a force in 5A for years, and all three schools have a long history of competing against each other.
“We have six conference games that are important to us,” said Coach Reeves, referring to the home-and-home games with the other three 6A schools. “The other [league] games will be ‘let’s get better’. Of course, we try to win every game we play,” he added.
Reeves and his Lady Bulldogs will play at home this Friday night against the Lady Tigers of Bentonville. The junior varsity squads will square off starting at 5 p.m. with the varsity game to follow between 6-6:30 p.m. Both the GHS girls and boys will then compete in a post-Christmas tournament at Mountain Home beginning December 29th.