It’s a two-hour bus ride down to Springdale, Ark., and a two-hour bus ride home again. But the longest stretch of the night for the Lady Tigers Friday was probably the 32 minutes they spent on the basketball court at Har-Ber High School, where they suffered a lopsided 48-29 loss.
Har-Ber scored the first 11 points of the game and Republic never recovered, managing just two field goals in the first half and six in the entire game. At the end of the first quarter, the Lady Wildcats led Republic 14-3, and the lead was 27-14 at halftime. At the end of the third quarter, Republic had done just enough to hang around, but still trailed 35-20.
The only bright spot of the night happened early in the fourth quarter, when Republic toughened its defense and scored a couple of buckets to get the lead down to 11 points, 35-24, with about 6:30 remaining.
But just as quickly as Republic seized some momentum, Har-Ber took it back. Maddux McCrackin splashed home a three-pointer from the left corner and drew a foul. She completed the four-point play and stretched the lead back to 15 points.
Coach Kris Flood said after the game the Lady Tigers were “just not prepared mentally to play. We came out, really had no intensity no effort. It was just not very good effort on either end, and when you play a team like that, that’s the result you’re going to get.”
Flood said the early deficit was too much to overcome against a team as good as Har-Ber, who improved to 6-2 this season.
“Even when we made a run, they were able to answer it,” he said. “But we were our own worst enemy the whole night. Not to take anything away from them, because … they’re a good team, but I don’t think they’re 20 points better than us.”
Republic falls to 1-1.
Unofficial Scoring
Savana Powell-Goodman 8, Kaemyn Bekemeier 5, Shealyn Barrett 5, Delaney Smith 3, Kaitlyn Ragsdale 3, Jazzy Kirby 3, Jade Kirby 2