Maumee girls rebound from disastrous performance with solid effort in Genoa rematch

Taylor Smith

By JEREMY SCHNEIDER

IMA SPORTS

It was a tale of two games, and while the Maumee girls basketball team lost both of them, they were vastly different results.

The Panthers started the week with a humbling 64-22 loss at Genoa that saw them trail 33-4 at halftime. It was the type of loss this year’s team hadn’t suffered, and it very well could have been demoralizing.

It wasn’t, though. Playing a rematch at home just three days later, Maumee put up a huge challenge to the Northern Buckeye Conference-leading Comets, going toe-to-toe in a 66-60 loss.

“It was one of those games on Monday where you could throw out the tape,” Maumee coach Rafael Soler said. “That wasn’t us. That wasn’t the team we’ve seen all year, and I think (the players) realized that, too.

“It’s the mentality that you’ve got to come to work every day, and that’s what they did. They have pretty short memories. It was hard that night and a little bit the next day, but they were ready to play. That’s something that’s going to help in a long season, you’ve got to bounce back.”

The Panthers (8-5, 6-3 NBC) went down early in both games, trailing 15-2 after Monday’s first quarter and 17-4 midway through Thursday’s opening minutes. Unlike Monday, Maumee picked itself up and rallied with a 9-0 run to end the first on Thursday.

So rather than being down by 29 points at halftime like Monday, the Panthers trailed 30-28 at halftime in the rematch, even taking a 32-30 lead in the third.

“I knew we still had that fight, you could see it,” Soler said. “It felt different, even though it was the same thing. You could see it in their eyes that they wanted this one.”

Facing the same team in the span of a few days is an odd occurrence, and Soler said his team had to adjust to the situation.

“We let them play a little more loose, didn’t call as many set plays,” Soler said. “We told them to just go be athletes, beat them on offense.”

Taylor Smith (six points) and Lucy Porter (five) led the team in scoring on Monday.

Those two once again led the way on Thursday, but with much higher totals — Porter poured in 22 points and 14 rebounds with four assists and four steals, and Smith had 13 points, five boards and two assists.

Reign Hurt came up with 10 points, including a pair of 3-pointers, and three blocked shots.

While the two point totals put up by the Comets (11-3, 9-0 NBC) were by far the most given up by Maumee this year, the defense came up with nine steals and scored 14 points off turnovers in the rematch.

On the season, Maumee is allowing 39.9 points per game, second best in the conference. Oak Harbor leads the league in scoring defense, allowing 39.1 points per game, and Genoa is fourth at 40.9.

Not only do the Panthers not give up many points, but they’re scoring 37 percent of their points off turnovers and 22 percent of their points in transition.

“When we’re locked in, I think we can play with anyone in the area,” Soler said. “That’s something you can hang your hat on every night, is defense. Shots are going to come and go, you’re going to have hot and cold nights, but defense is something that you can consistently be good at if you put in the effort.”

Photo courtesy of Pride of the Panthers

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