Panthers shake off sluggish start, move past Chargers in regional semifinals

CARTHAGE, Ill. — The Central-Southeastern girls basketball team did not have its usual explosiveness on Tuesday, but Panthers coach Matt Long was not all that shocked.

“Whatever the reason was, there wasn’t a lot of intensity in the gym tonight,” Long said.

Several players, including all-state forward Lauren Miller, still battling sickness could have had something to do with that slow start, but the top-seeded Panthers found enough gas in the tank to pull away from No. 7 seed Illini West and advance to the Class 2A Illini West Regional title game with a 49-34 victory at the Illini West High School gym.

“Just survive and advance,” Miller said.

The Panthers, ranked sixth in the Associated Press Class 2A state poll, survived an early push from the Chargers. CSE went scoreless for a 4-minute, 36-second stretch before Miller knocked down a 3-pointer to give the Panthers a 13-9 lead with 5:02 left in the second quarter.

Miller drained another triple 35 seconds later and converted a transition layup 27 seconds after that for a personal 8-0 run.

“Once we got a little more separation, we started to calm down a little bit more,” said Miller, who led all scorers with 19 points.

That separation got as large as 23-9 until Illini West junior guard Lanie Housewright, who finished with 18 points, made a deep 3-pointer at the second quarter buzzer to halt a 13-0 CSE run.

“We talked a lot in practice yesterday about once we broke their pressure in the full court, once we got in the halfcourt to run our offense and get a really, really good shot and control that tempo,” Chargers coach Grant Surprenant said. “I thought we did a really good job of that once we settled down offensively. Over the course of the game, we knew they were going to continue to pressure us, and they started making some shots.”

Long said until the Panthers went on that spurt to close the first half, they had a bit of a passive mindset on offense.

“We talk about that all the time. Nobody is going to give us anything. You have to go take it,” Long said. “That’s kind of what we talked about on the offensive end. We’re holding the ball too much, not moving. Go make plays, go be an athlete.

“We never did get to where we wanted to be, but a win is a win.”

Miller had 15 points in the first half, and while she only got two shots to fall in the second half, other players like senior guard Kayli Bockhold picked up the scoring slack. Bockhold scored the Panthers’ first five points of the third quarter and made another 3-pointer that extended CSE’s lead to 47-29 midway through the fourth quarter and gave her eight points.

“Those (shots) were pretty big, at least for me,” Bockhold said. “The past few games, I haven’t been making my shots that much, so making those gave me some confidence and gave our team some confidence, too.”

The Chargers never got closer than 10 points in the second half, and even though the Panthers only gave up 19 points through three quarters, Long said they could have been even better defensively.

“Still we did a lot of fundamental things wrong on the defensive end — not rotating correctly, not being up in the passing lane, being too flat, things like that,” Long said. “They’re all fixable things.”

Miller agreed with her coach.

“We hold ourselves to a high standard,” Miller said. “We know that wasn’t our best. Some people might say, ‘Hey, that’s pretty good,’ but we know we can be a lot better. We have to hold ourselves to a high standard, or else we’re going to keep regressing. We have to keep working toward the goal, so we have to keep pushing ourselves.”

Working their way back up to that standard starts Wednesday as the Panthers prepare for their regional championship clash with fourth-seeded Petersburg PORTA at 7 p.m. Friday.

“We just need to lock in these next couple practices,” Bockhold said.

As for how worried he should be about the Panthers’ uncharacteristically low level of intensity on Tuesday carrying over into Friday, Long said that could go one of two ways.

“Should I be concerned or should the next team we play be concerned?” Long said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that any game they can open it up and bring that explosiveness. That story will be told at a later date.”

Long has an inkling things will be different on Friday.

“I think we’ll open it up next game,” Long said.