Coming into Friday’s contest on a five-game win streak, the Shawano Community High School girls basketball team looked lost throughout most of its 64-26 loss to Seymour.
The Thunder, who were riding a two-game losing streak, jumped out to a quick lead, scoring the first nine points before conceding a Sara Hokenstad jumper 4 minutes and 32 seconds into the game.
“How we prepared mentally and how practice was all week, that’s how we played,” Shawano head coach Ryan Koenig said. “So the girls have to figure it out. … We’re senior oriented, so they should know this from previous years. They should be mentally focused, practice hard and be ready for the game. Obviously, we saw tonight, we were not in the game at all.”
Seymour continually forced turnovers in its zone, leading to easy fastbreak points and fouls that allowed them to get to the free-throw line 23 times.
The Thunder (7-5, 4-1 Bay Conference) extended their lead to 14 points with eight minutes remaining in the first half, and another Hokenstad baseline jumped narrowed the lead to 12 points, but that was as close as the Hawks would get for the remainder of the game. The Thunder ripped off a 15-3 run to finish the half.
“We’ve been forcing a lot of turnovers this year in our zone,” Seymour head coach Nick Darnick said. “We have a really good player at the top in Hailey Oskey. She forces a lot of high passes, which then can get stolen. That’s a nice key that we have.”
Oskey, who is second in the conference in scoring at 17.1 points per game, tallied 22 points, including 10 field goals, the majority of those coming off layups on fastbreak opportunities.
Morgan Klitzke, who leads the Hawks in scoring this year, was held scoreless.
Hokenstad had six of the Hawks’ 9 first-half points, as she finished with a team-high 9 points. Brandi Gueths scored 8 second-half points for Shawano.
The slow start and offensive struggles could be attributed to the fact that the Hawks hadn’t played a game since Dec. 22, but Koenig had no excuse for the defensive letdown.
“Defensively,” Koenig said, “that’s pure mental focus.”
Shawano (7-4, 2-3 Bay) now has about a week until it travels to Menasha for another Bay Conference matchup.
The Hawks can get back to their winning ways, Koenig believes, if they work harder in practice
“We’ve got to get back into the winning streak we had in the end and the intensity,” Koenig said. “Our intensity, our focus, we’ve got to get that back before next Thursday.”
Seymour (64)
Oskey 10 2-5 22, VandenLangenberg 2 5-8 9, Zahn 2 0-0 4, Moehring 0 4-4 4, Krause 5 2-2 14, Heinke 2 0-0 4, Buchholtz 3 1-2 7.
Shawano (26)
Monfils 1 0-0 2, Mo. Klitzke 0 0-1 0, Me. Klitzke 1 3-4 5, To. DePerry 0 0-1 0, Hokenstad 3 2-4 9, Young 0 1-2 1, Ward 0 1-2 1, Gueths 2 4-6 8.
Seymour 33 31 — 64
Shawano 9 17 — 26
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