Basketball: Solid effort comes up short for Lady Panthers

The Permian Lady Panthers refused to go quietly, but an inability to score was too much to overcome Friday against the Abilene High Lady Eagles.

The Lady Eagles overcame their own offensive woes to take a 41-23 victory at the Permian Fieldhouse, outscoring the Lady Panthers 21-7 over the final 18 minutes.

Permian (8-17 overall, 0-8 District 3-5A) managed just one point in the fourth quarter in losing its 12th in a row, but Lady Panthers coach Jennifer Shuttlesworth said there were some encouraging moments against the district’s second-place team.

“Obviously, I’d much rather win than lose, but I’m proud of our effort,” Shuttlesworth said. “We concentrated on offensive rebounding and we stayed with them on the boards. That’s an improvement. We were more aggressive.

“Our shots just didn’t fall. We didn’t really give ourselves opportunities on offense a lot of times to score. We made some mistakes there, but for the most part we played a lot better. Our defense was tremendously improved.”

Neither team had a player score in double figures with Abilene High’s Madison Reyes topping the list with nine points, seven of which came in the first quarter.

Permian got four points each from Bridgette Palmer, Shelby Chancellor and Alex Comer. The Lady Panthers’ starting five combined for just 11 points and as the team went 10-of-38 from the floor.

Abilene High (11-12, 6-1) fared little better, going 16-of-51 from the field, but never trailed after scoring the game’s first six points.

“We weren’t executing very well offensively and I give Permian a lot of credit,” AHS coach Brent Palmer said. “They were playing really hard the first half and doing some things, and we were not handling it very well. I told the kids at halftime that they were going to have to turn up the defense and create some offense out of the defense. Luckily, we were able to do that.”

Another turning point was rebounding. After Permian posted a 19-12 edge on the boards in the first half, AHS outrebounded the Lady Panthers 14-6 in the third quarter and finished with a 40-35 advantage.

“It’s huge because you get second and third shots at the basket,” Palmer said. “That’s something we weren’t doing in the first half. When you’re not shooting the ball well, you’ve got to have offensive rebounding.”

Permian trailed by as much as nine in the second quarter before twice cutting the margin to four, the last time on a basket by Chancellor with 2:11 to go. Abilene High outscored the Lady Panthers 21-7 the rest of the way, allowing only a free throw by Allie Moroles in the fourth quarter.

“The first time we played Abilene High, we had 46 turnovers,” Shuttlesworth said. “Tonight we had 28. That’s a huge improvement. We played them better than we did the first time and we just played better than we have in a while. Hopefully, that will speed us into Tuesday playing OHS.”

The Lady Panthers visit Odessa High at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the second crosstown matchup of the season. Odessa High won the first meeting 62-54 on Dec. 17.