The Indianola girls and boys basketball squads earned a split against a pair of ranked Dallas Center-Grimes teams on their home court Friday evening in Little Hawkeye Conference play, with the girls winning 50-45 against #6 in class 4A, and the boys falling to #1 in class 3A 52-42 in a pair of games heard live on 94.3 KNIA.
The Indians girls got off to a slow start, trailing 14-10 at the end of the first quarter, and saw the deficit grow to 21-10 halfway through the second. From that point on however, the Indians would dominate the contest, going on a 14-7 run to end the quarter and building that out to a 38-33 third quarter lead. The Mustangs got the score down to a three-point lead with less than a minute to go, but the Indians closed the game out with 6-8 shooting from the free-throw line in the 4th quarter to pick up the victory. Indians head coach Jeff Janssen tells KNIA Sports it took a little while before the Indians got going, however he credits his teams preparation to help them deal with the defensive intensity.
“We knew they were going to pressure Lauren (Blake) and Kendall (Clatt) and we practice every single day handling that kind of pressure. Credit goes out to our scout team and JV girls for really helping give us a great look this week, and that really helped us settle down halfway through that second quarter.”
Lauren Blake led the Indians with 24 points.
The Indians boys couldn’t muster up enough offense against the Mustangs, as they trailed nearly the entire game. Trailing by as much as nine points in the first half, the Indians fought back to trail only 24-20 at the halftime break, but the deficit would stay near that throughout the entirety of the second half, with the Indians not able to get within a possession. With the deficit down to four halfway through the fourth, the Mustangs shot 12-14 from the free throw line to close the game out. Drew Kingery and Caden Rehmeier each scored 11 points to lead the Indians. The girls improve to 5-1 on the season, and the boys fall to 2-3, with both teams playing Warren County rival Carlisle on Monday.