The Republic Lady Tigers got into early foul trouble, didn’t play very well on defense, didn’t rebound especially well, and missed a lot of shots. But they hit nine three-pointers and were still good enough to go on the road against previously unbeaten Waynesville and escape with a 72-57 victory.
All five Tiger starts scored in double figures, led by Alexis Ladwig with 18 points. Ladwig had four three-pointers in the game to lead the Republic offense.
“I had a good feeling about tonight,” Ladwig says. “[Coach Flood] made a huge deal that they’re going to be a good team, so I knew I just needed to do something good.”
Republic used its full-court press to build an early lead and made it hold up. The Lady Tigers jumped on top of Waynesville 15-5 and led 23-13 at the end of the first quarter. It was 40-28 at halftime, even though the fouls were starting to add up.
Waynesville scored a lot of its points on second and third chances after offensive rebounds. Flood says he knew that would be a challenge for his Lady Tigers.
“We knew we were going to have some trouble with them, but we had emphasized that they were going to be extremely aggressive. All five of them were going to crash the boards, and they’re pretty physical,” Flood says. “We seem to be somewhat finesse, and there’s just going to be some times when we have to bear down and do a better job with that.”
Midway through the third quarter, Waynesville was hanging tough when Brooke Stanfield picked up her fourth foul and went to the bench. But Jordan Kabetske stole Waynesville’s in-bound pass and went to the other end for a lay-up, stretching the lead back to 12. Later in the quarter, after Waynesville cut the lead to eight points, Brylee Argo, Ladwig, and Taylor Fergen drained three-pointers on consecutive trips down the floor to strech it back into double digits again.
The lead was as big as 16 points in the fourth quarter, before Waynesville reeled off eight straight points to make the score 65-57. That was as close as the game would get.
In addition to Ladywig’s 18 points, Republic got 14 each from Jordan Kabetske and Brylee Argo. Taylor Fergen and Brooke Stanfield scored 12 each. Carly Bayans added two.
Republic improves to 4-0 this season. Waynesville drops to 3-1.
Republic’s JV team won 58-29. The freshmen won 48-26.
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