Rising Sun girls basketball coach Kathy Stoudt had already lost to Perryville without having star center Abby Mack on the floor. Stoudt was not going to let that happen again. Mack picked up her fourth foul with 6:30 left in the fourth quarter, but the Tigers' coach kept the junior standout in the game and Mack helped her team hang on for a 33-31 triumph over the Panthers Thursday night. "I figured we needed her," Stoudt said. "We couldn't play without her. She just does too many good things for us. She's in the right spot at the right time. She plays great defense. She gets a rebound. So at that point I had to live or die. If she would've gotten her fifth foul it would've been what it was, but I kept her in." Mack made a free throw to raise Rising Sun's lead to 32-27 with 3:19 remaining. Teri Wennersten scored four straight points to pull Perryville within one with 15 seconds left. The Tigers' Lexi Osborne hit the first of two free throws to lengthen the lead to 33-31. She missed the second and there was a tie-up on the rebound with the arrow pointing to the Panthers. After a timeout, Perryville brought the ball upcourt but missed a potential game-tying shot in the lane. The buzzer sounded during a battle for the rebound. Three weeks earlier, the Panthers had beaten Rising Sun for the first time in 15 years. "We were very determined to beat them this week," Osborne said. "We don't like losing at all. We came to win, definitely." The Tigers triumphed despite scoring just 12 points in the second half. "I could blame the snow and not practicing for a week but we've had nights like this before the storm so…I don't know," Stoudt said. "We've just got to get them back to practice [Friday] and get them shooting. I know none of them touched a ball for a week. You could tell both teams were kind of rusty there. But I was proud of them. They did what they needed to do. Our kids did we we needed to do down at the end to win." Perryville coach Mike Blizzard said his squad is not accustomed to being the hunted. "It's hard with a target on your back," he said. "We're in first place so we're not catching anybody by surprise…We're not used to playing with a target on our back. We have to get used to people coming at us and playing their best game against us. We're used to catching people by surprise. [Thursday night], I think we kept thinking, 'we've got time, we've got time'. Before you know it, we're down to the last two minutes and now you're scrambling. We're not exactly a good team that scrambles…The week off hurts, but it hurts both teams so it's definitely not an excuse." Wennersten paced Perryville with 10 points and 17 rebounds. Osborne led Rising Sun with 13 points. Mack had six points and 12 rebounds. Megan Brown collected four points and seven rebounds. Liz Zatalava provided eight rebounds. Mack missed Perryville's January 5 win because of injury. Stoudt said she doesn't feel like the Panthers' win intensified the rivalry because she already had admiration for the Perryville program. "I have a lot of respect for [Blizzard] as a coach and the great job he's done there," said Stoudt. "They're a much improved team from the years I've seen in the past. [The loss to Perryville didn't foster the rivalry] just because we didn't have Abby Mack so without Abby Mack we were losing to everybody. But with Abby Mack we only beat them by two. We respect them, for sure." Comments are closed.
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