LIZTON — Southmont girls basketball season officially began Thursday night as the Mounties traveled to take on Sagamore Conference foe Tri-West. A combination of inexperience and turnovers allowed the Bruins to pick up a 58-37 win. Southmont kept pace with the Bruins for the first half of the first quarter, however an 8-0 to end the quarter saw the Bruins take a 20-10 lead and they never looked back. Full-court pressure by Tri-West forced 31 Mountie turnovers and the Bruins knocked down seven threes in the win. Despite the season-opening lost, Southmont coach Dan Burkman was optimistic after the game.
“I was very happy with our effort tonight,” Burkman said. “I told them that in the locker room afterwards. No matter what the score may have said, they were never defeated and played hard the entire game. Near the end we started to get tired and made a few mental mistakes, but we did a lot of good things. I can handle mistakes as long as we’re playing hard and trying to do the right thing.”
Belle Miller started her senior season off with a double-double by leading the Mounties in scoring with 16 points and grabbing 14 rebounds. Dori Frederick added in seven points and Jade Gann scored four. “We’re going to need that our of Belle every night,” Burkman said. “We’ll need Dori to hit from the outside a bit more and get to the free-throw line. The person I thought had a really great game was Jade Gann. She showed great intensity and I told her that I need to see that more in practice because she was a totally different player tonight.”
Isabelle Saylor led all scorers in the game with 20 points for the Bruins. Kenna Kirby added in 17 points in the win.
Having some players like Gann and others get their first taste of varsity experience against a Bruins team who has five seniors on their roster, mistakes were bound to happen, but Burkman talked about it’s how his group responds is what is important.
“DeLorean had a pretty rough day,” he said. “But at the end of the day she has no choice but to get better. She was getting the best defender most of the time coming down to the court. We need to learn how to adjust on the fly because Hanna and Dori are capable of handling the ball if need be. At the end of the day there’s a lot of things that we did well, but also there’s a lot of things that we know we need to get better at. We’ll put this game behind us and move forward.”
Southmont (0-1, 0-1 SAC) will be back in action Saturday afternoon as they host Clinton Central in their home opener while the Bruins (1-0, 1-0 SAC) will travel to Westfield next Tuesday.
