PRAIRIE GROVE — Gravette coach Will Pittman loudly slapped the ball with both hands after catching an errant pass during the third quarter of his team’s 51-41 loss against Pottsville in the quarterfinals of Wednesday’s 4A North Regional Tournament.
Pittman’s frustration certainly was warranted as it was the Lady Lions’ eighth turnover in the first three minutes of the second half. They turned it over 11 times in the third quarter to help the Lady Apaches erase a halftime deficit on their way to the 10-point victory.
“It was like a floodgate opening that you couldn’t get shut,” said Pittman, who called two timeouts in a row to try to settle his team down. “It was just one of those things. We couldn’t stop doing the same thing.”
Gravette led 15-11 at the end of the first quarter and still maintained a 21-20 halftime lead despite the Lady Apaches’ defense forcing seven turnovers in the second quarter. The Lady Lions’ early success came in the paint where they owned a decisive height advantage. Gravette has three regulars listed at 5-foot-11, while Pottsville’s tallest starter is 5-10. Pottsville coach Chance Johnson admitted his players were intimidated while trying to score over taller defenders.
“We missed a lot of easy layups,” Johnson said. “Just the physicality of the game kind of got us off our game early on, but I thought we adjusted well to it as the game went along, especially in the second half.”
Pottsville outscored Gravette 19-9 during the third quarter behind its full- and half-court defense. The Lady Apaches ran a “jump-and-trap” and a zone press defense to “mix ‘em up,” Johnson said. But their half-court zone was equally as effective as pressure by Johnson’s guards along the perimeter allowed his post players to deny and deflect pass attempts to the inside.
“We got some turnovers there that led to some points that really got us going,” Johnson said. “We knew what we had to do to stop them, but to Gravette’s credit, they came out and really attacked us early. We just finally figured it out and started playing the way we were capable of playing.”
Gravette 15 6 9 11 — 41
Pottsville 11 9 19 12 — 51
Gravette (16-14): Hicks 13, A. Pinter 10, Foster 7, Branscum 6, Kardynalski 3, S. Pinter 2.
Pottsville (21-5): Rust 16, A. Campbell 14, Brannon 7, S. Campbell 6, Cormier 6, McClure 2.