Lady Hounds suffocate Mt. Pleasant

Stuck in the mud

The first half I’m not entirely upset with. Four points in half is always great and they held them at one for a while where we mixed up two presses. But offensively in the second half we got stuck in the mud. We’ve gotta find better ways to execute”

Landon Bentley, FMHS girls head coach

MT. PLEASANT – Mt. Pleasant’s Lady Panthers had a one-point lead over Fort Madison after a free throw that opened the scoring Friday night in Mt. Pleasant.
From that point on, it was all Fort Madison as the Bloodhounds rolled to a 38-12 sluggish win in Southeast Conference girls basketball action.
Aija Jenkins had 11 points and Taylor Johnson threw in ten and a couple blocked shots to lead Fort Madison.
“Last year when we played here it was 24-19 and we won,” said Fort Madison Head Coach Landon Bentley. “It was a slow churn.”
The slow churn was the slower pace deployed by Mt. Pleasant (1-5, 0-2) who finds itself in a reset of sorts after losing Andrea Lopreato, one of the conference’s top scorer’s last year.
The Panthers didn’t get their second point of the game until the 4:26 mark of the second quarter when Abby Carthey scored inside. Mt. Pleasant committed six turnovers in the first period leading to 11 of the Hounds 16 points in the quarter.
Then the Panthers tucked back into a 2-3 on defense to try and slow the pace of the game, but Fort Madison mixed in a couple different presses to keep the energy moving and raced to a 30-4 first-half lead. That pressure forced the Panthers into twelve first half turnovers.
Johnson had all ten of her points in the first half, scoring inside and then jumping out to the perimeter for a couple 3-balls.
Fort Madison didn’t give up more than five points in any quarter with the Bloodhounds clearly being the quicker team on the floor. Mt. Pleasant scored just three points in the third period and five in the fourth.
Bentley substituted liberally in the fourth quarter and the Hounds got just an early bucket by Jenkins, and then were held scoreless the rest of the way.
Fort Madison is now 2-0 in the Southeast Conference and 5-0 overall heading into a non-conference matchup Saturday afternoon against Pella in Fort Madison.
Bentley said the Hounds can’t play as sluggish Saturday against the Dutch as they did Friday night.
“There wasn’t a lot of movement. We tried to mix things up and open it up a bit with our press, but we’ve got a put a full game together tomorrow against Pella, we can’t have a second half like we had tonight,” he said.
“The first half I’m not entirely upset with. Four points in a half is always great. And they held them at one for a while where we mixed up two presses. But offensively in the second half we got stuck in the mud. We’ve gotta find better ways to execute."
Dayonna Davis had eight points in the win Friday. Irelynd Sargent had five points and Halle Menke added four.