GREENVILLE – The Lady Wave dropped a Wednesday night 28-26 home MVL game to the Vandalia-Butler Aviators on a desperation buzzer-beater with 0:00 showing on the game clock.
“It doesn’t just come down to that one play,” said Greenville coach Rachael Kerns following the game. “It’s just unfortunate that one play is what we remember.”
The teams came into the night both sporting 2-0 records in MVL play, both with identical 41.0 defensive marks and Greenville averaging 1-point better per game on the season.
The visitors took the opening period 8-4 as both teams struggled to find the open basket in 8-minutes of play.
The defensive struggle carried over into the second 8-minute period with each team managing just 4-points sending the game to the break with Butler holding a 12-8 advantage.
“We just have to do a better job offensively especially in the first half, being more efficient,” Kerns stated, “but defensively we did a really great job as far as not giving up a lot of points.”
The Lady Wave battled back to take period No. 3 by a 12-5 score taking 20-17 lead to the final period of play. Haleigh Behnken paced Greenville with 7-points in the third including 3-pointer.
“Offensive we had great looks in the first half,” Coach Kerns noted. “We just didn’t capitalize on them and the second half we played more of a complete game of basketball.”
The Lady Aviators took the final period 11-6 to earn the 2-point win.
“We always want to get the league wins,” said Kerns. “We just need to make sure that we do what is asked of us. We have to grow, we have to use this game as fuel to get better for the next one.”
Behnken led the Lady Wave with 10-points.
BOXSCORE:
VANDALIA-BUTLER 28, GREENVILLE 26
VANDALIA-BUTLER – Evan Neely 14, G. Price 5, Ella Neely 4, L. Crawford 3, E. Ledbetter 2 – TOTALS 12 1-2 1 38
GREENVILLE – H. Behnken 10, A. Hayes 9, M. Gilbert 5, L. McKinney 2 – TOTALS 8 7-13 1 26
3-POINTERS
Vandalia-Butler 1 (G. Price 1)
Greenville 1 (H. Behnken 1)
SCORE by QUARTERS:
08-04-05-11 28 Vandalia-Butler
04-04-12-06 26 Greenville