PLYMOUTH — If Saturday’s girls basketball semistate had been played under the old NBA rules, the game between Pendleton Heights and South Bend Washington might have turned out differently.
The Arabians were defeated soundly by the Panthers in an attempt to advance to the Class 4A state finals. But it certainly didn’t start out that way.
South Bend opened the game in a man-to-man defense, but it was ill-equipped to execute that against PH.
“We carved that up, didn’t we,” said Pendleton coach Shari Doud, who still found a way to smile after the 77-45 defeat. “If they would have stayed in that defense, there might have been a different team cutting down the nets.”
The Panthers’ Rakeesha Lane was not able to guard anyone on the PH starting five. In the beginning, it was Amanda Gaskin who blew past Lane.
“We got their attention,” said PH assistant coach Ed Clark. “We got them to try something they didn’t want to do.” Unfortunately, the Panthers were good at everything they tried.
That’s where the old NBA rules prohibiting zones would have come in handy.
“They went to that spread 2-3 zone,” Doud said. “Give them credit. They adjusted. We played with a sound defensive approach until the last four minutes of the first half. Then our defensive approach wasn’t so sound.”
The spread defense caused a pair of problems.
The first of these was finding a passing lane around the bull-rush traps that South Bend launched out of that spread zone.
“Even our guards that are long had trouble seeing through those traps,” Doud said. “We had a hard time attacking that.”
The second thing was with the Arabians also spread out, long passes became necessary and quite dangerous given the quickness of the Panthers defenders.
With the Panthers building a lead and dictating the pace, the race was on, and it was one the Arabians were destined to lose.
“We can play that style,” Doud said. “But we can’t play that style against that team.”
Washington also had a huge advantage in that it had been to this level four straight times.
“They’ve played here four times, and this was our first time,” said PH sophomore Hannah Douglas. “I think that gave them a big advantage.”
Certainly the Panthers’ biggest advantage was senior Skylar Diggins. It was my second viewing of this slender 5-foot-10 guard. Both times it was unpleasant. The first time was a couple of years back in this same gym, when she helped the Panthers take apart Anderson.
Diggins most surprising quality is her strength. Several times, her drives to the basket drew contact from the Arabians, and it seemed like nearly every time she finished the drive with a basket and a free throw.
That strength will be needed next Saturday when South Bend faces a very tough Ben Davis team for the 4A state title at Lucas Oil Stadium. It will be a game worth watching. For me, I’ll have to DVR it as I will be at a boys basketball sectional championship game.
But this is certainly not a time to close out the local girls basketball scene without giving a huge sendoff to the Arabians. Pendleton Heights’ defense was better than any I’ve seen in many years of covering girls basketball.
Had I not been there is person Saturday, I would not have believed the PH team would give up 77 points in a single game, not even to the unbeaten Panthers.
Yet the strongest and longest-lasting memories will be of the consistently hard-nosed effort given by the Arabians and the classy manner in which they handled themselves in victory and in Saturday’s defeat.
