The annual H. B. Stewart Classic basketball tournament concluded Saturday night with the local legend himself seated at courtside in the arena named for him. Former Greenwood coach and athletic director H. B. Stewart was in attendance for all three days of the event and stayed late on Saturday to present team and individual trophies. One of those team trophies went to the host Lady Bulldogs for winning the girls division with a perfect 3-0 record. They are 6-2 overall.
Teams from Farmington, Ozark, and Poteau (OK) played in the three-day round robin event that began Thursday, with four games each day. Saturday's early results included the Ozark girls defeating Poteau, 59-42, while the Poteau boys downed Ozark, 51-44. The Farmington Cardinals won the boys division, also with a perfect record after defeating Greenwood on Saturday night. The Bulldogs finished the tournament winless and are 2-6 overall for the season.
Lady Bulldogs
Coach Clay Reeves and his GHS girls played for the tournament title Saturday night against the Lady Cardinals of Farmington, a tall and talented team that had split previous games against Ozark and Poteau. A Farmington win would have given them the title by virtue of the tiebreaker, and the Lady Cards got off to a good start, outscoring Greenwood 11-5 in the first quarter.
With two six-footers on the floor virtually all the time, the visitors seemed determined to keep the ball away from Greenwood star forward Endsley Evans. The 5-10 sophomore had to work hard for her points, scoring a dozen in the game, and eventually fouled out in the final minute of the contest. But senior guard Rebel Clay came through to take up the scoring slack, pouring in 20 points for the game. Evans made the all-tournament team and Clay was named MVP.
Trailing by six at the start of the second period, Greenwood turned on the jets offensively, beating Farmington 20-15 over the next eight minutes to narrow the Farmington lead to just 26-25 at the half. Floundering a bit to start the third period, Coach Reeves called time and rallied his troops at the 6:35 mark, down 29-25. But when play resumed, the Lady Bulldogs continued to fire blanks, missing at least their first 10 shots of the quarter, and found themselves trailing 33-25.
Senior guard Lynsey Turner finally broke the scoring drought with a field goal at the 4:20 mark. After another GHS timeout, sophomore Haley Donald connected on a three-pointer to make the score 33-30. Evans followed with a conventional three-point play and Farmington led 37-35 at the 1:27 mark. Rebel Clay then hit a trey to give Greenwood a 38-37 lead and Evans added a pair of free throws as the two teams ended the period tied at 40-40.
Two free throws and a field goal by Donald put the Lady 'Dogs up 44-41 before the Lady Cardinals rallied back to regain the advantage at 45-44 with five minutes left to play. It would be the last time that Greenwood would trail in the game. At the 4:05 mark Donald hit a long jumper just inside the three-point stripe to regain the lead at 46-45. Junior forward Jessicah Moudy scored inside then later added a free throw, as did Rebel Clay, giving Greenwood a 50-46 lead.
Clay continued to score at the charity stripe, sinking four straight free throws to increase the lead to 54-48. Leading 55-51, Moudy scored three more times at the line before Clay got her 19th and 20th points of the game to seal the victory, also from the charity stripe. Besides Clay's 20 and Evans' 12 points, Donald came off the bench to score 11 points. Moudy finished with six points.
Coach Reeves talked with members of the media after Saturday's win. “We had trouble getting started in the first quarter,” he said. “We started out real slow and I was wondering if we were going to get going, but the last three quarters I thought we put out a great effort. But going into the fourth quarter tied up, it's going to come down to just making plays, and I thought our kids stepped up and made some good defensive plays. I know some more kids hit free throws, but Rebel [Clay] really stepped up and hit a lot of free throws down the stretch, and I know Jessicah Moudy hit a couple down the stretch, and that's what it takes to win those close games, to not turn it over and to hit your free throws.”
Reeves had some other kind words to say about the play of Jessicah Moudy. “When she really wants to and puts her mind to it, she's a great player, and that's what I try to tell her. She's got to be ready to play every possession. We expect great things out of her just like we do all of our players. We're making progress and everybody's starting to get on the same page a little bit. There are still five or six more games before conference for us to continue to get better. Our chemistry is getting a lot better, we're running the ball a lot better, our defense is getting better, and our rebounding is getting better. Everything we were having trouble with the first two or three games of the year we're [now] improving on. I stay on them every day about it, and I know they get tired of hearing it, but it's soaking in and they're getting after it.”
Reeves also spoke of the tough competition in the tournament. “Farmington's got a really good team, and Ozark did last night. For our 11th and 12th graders, they know it's like that every night in our conference - close games like that - and our 10th graders, I told them last night and tonight, these are just like conference games, it comes down to the end.”
Finally, the coach addressed the adjustment the opposition defense is starting to make on GHS newcomer Endsley Evans, the team's leading scorer so far this season. “Everybody is starting to double team her, because our guards are doing such a great job of getting her the ball and she is finishing. But it took a couple of them to hold her down. That's what we talk about in practice. If they want to put two on her, it leaves it wide open for someone else to shoot - the inside, outside game - and our team is starting to figure that out.”
Bulldogs - Cardinals
The GHS boys continue to make progress despite their losing record, according to new head coach Brian Martin, who was pleased with the effort and the improvement he saw against Farmington on Saturday night. Since the end of football season on November 20th, Martin and assistant coach Renner Reed have had fewer than a dozen practices with those boys making the transition from the gridiron to the hard court.
“What I was looking for tonight,” said Martin after Saturday's loss, “was were we going to respond to adversity. That's a very good Farmington basketball team. They're going to do very good things the rest of the year, and I wanted to see how we were going to respond. Were we going to match their intensity, or were we going to be passive and not react to what they do to us? But I was very proud to see that we fought tonight and never gave up. If we have that effort, we're going to win some ballgames. That's the effort we're looking for, win or lose.”
Once again, the Bulldogs found themselves in a hole early, trailing 5-0 before getting on the scoreboard nearly two-and-a-half minutes into the contest. Farmington's full court defensive pressure was giving the 'Dogs problems, and Martin had to call his second timeout at the 3:50 mark after a Cardinals' trey made the score 12-2. But Greenwood was able to narrow the gap somewhat by the end of the period, trailing 16-8. The highlight of the final two minutes included a nice move by senior forward Spencer Harris to block a Farmington shot attempt.
Both teams went cold through the first three minutes of the second period, before junior guard Tony Sandifer got a layup to make the score 16-10. But the Cardinals roared back to life with an 11-0 run. Trailing 27-10, GHS junior guard Patrick Kelley finally stopped the bleeding with a three-pointer at the one-minute mark. Still, the Cardinals led 32-14 at the half.
After the break, the Bulldogs seemed to handle the defensive pressure better and matched Farmington's intensity. Senior forward Kyle Helms scored a couple of baskets inside and sophomore guard Ryan Lensing hit a pair of three-pointers early in the quarter to help trim the deficit to 38-28 inside the 3:00 mark. The Cardinals led 42-30 at the end of the period.
A 4-0 run by Farmington pretty much sealed the victory for the visitors early in the fourth quarter, stopping the momentum Greenwood had generated in the previous period. A pair of free throws by senior guard Brandon Brewer got the lead down to 10 points at the 1:10 mark, but the Bulldogs would get no closer, falling 56-44. Lensing finished the game with 17 points on five three-pointers. Helms scored 12 points with 10 of those coming in the second half.
Coach Martin noted that his team has shown a tendency to get behind early or to have a bad quarter offensively, digging a hole for themselves. It happened both nights against Poteau and Ozark in the tournament. “We've got to continue to try to build, and put four quarters together. Teams are different. We're still trying to find our identity. This team seems to have a slow start, and that's just part of figuring out which lineup we put in, and some of it is just being ready to play mentally. We're still growing in that area, and that's one area we've definitely got to get better at, because it's hurting us at the end of ball games. That's our next step - being able to come out ready to play at the beginning of the ball game, because you can't wait until the end of the game to fight back. You've got to put yourself in position to win the game at the beginning.”
The coach also had some comments regarding individual players. “It was good to see Ryan [Lensing] hit some shots. He had a really good first quarter [Friday] night and he brought his “A” game tonight. He's a really good shooter for us, and any time he can get going that definitely helps our team. [But] he's a sophomore, so he's learning. He's learning to play hard and he's doing a lot better job. Shawn Hankins had a really good tournament. He may not score very many points, but he brings stuff that doesn't show up in the box score. He brings the defensive effort. He's our ball stopper, and he moves the ball well in our offense. He's unselfish, and he's the kind of player that's easy to coach. Kyle Helms had a pretty good game tonight. In the second half the effort was there and he did a better job of guarding the post than he did the previous two nights, so it's good to see that he got better tonight.” Hankins was named to the all-tournament team.
Martin also talked about Farmington's defensive pressure. “We had a lot of unforced turnovers in the first half, and that was real frustrating,” he said, acknowledging that the press gave his team trouble. “We had to adjust to their pressure, but I thought we did an excellent job toward the end of the second quarter, and then in the second half it didn't bother us too much, and that's just learning to have poise and confidence in your teammates that they're going to be in the right spots, and just being strong with the ball. We're not going to see any better pressure than that. [Farmington] made us better tonight,” said Martin.
As for the rest of the non-conference season, the coach summed up his plans between now and January. “We've got six games left and we're breaking it down into two three-game seasons. Next week we've got Friday [at Bentonville], Saturday [Clarksville], and Monday [Fort Smith Northside] - three really good teams, and then we've got a Christmas tournament as Springdale Har-Ber. What we're trying to do between now and January is get better in the areas that we're weak at on both ends of the floor, and continue to grow as a team to find our identity. As a coach, I'm looking to find a good rotation of kids that play well together. We're taking small steps, but these next six games will help us grow as a team and help us get ready for January.