Girls finish season with sub-state loss to Derby

Greg Woods, Editor-in-Chief

After months of battling inexperience — and having a fair share of success with it — the Manhattan High girls basketball team’s season is over.

It ended Friday night with a 37-25 sub-state final loss to Derby, a game in which the Lady Indians, who finish the season with a 14-8 mark, struggled to find a rhythm offensively.

Much of that can be attributed to the defensive presence of Derby’s 6-5 center Kennedy Brown, who scored seven points, but whose rim protection made it difficult for Manhattan to find baskets underneath.

Junior Gigi McAtee though, who finished with nine points, said it was her team’s persistence to keep shooting that led to the Lady Indians’ 9-of-43 mark from the field.

“The problem was we kept shooting,” McAtee said. “When you’re not hitting, you’ve got to find another way to score, and we didn’t change anything offensively — at halftime, or in timeouts, or at quarters. When you keep doing the same thing, it’s not going to work, because they know how to stop it.”

The Lady Panthers employed a zone look on defense, an arrangement McAtee said also contributed to Manhattan’s offensive inefficiency.

“With [Brown] in the middle of the zone, you don’t want to drive in there and get swatted,” McAtee said. “So I think we just thought, ‘well, all we can do is shoot.’”

Further plaguing the Lady Indians were turnovers. Manhattan totaled 13 of them.

“Those were definitely on us,” McAtee said. “There were a lot of passes that were thrown to no one, and I think we got sped up. And when you’re not hitting shots, you’re getting frustrated, and you’re freaking out, you’ve got to score. We got way too sped up way too quickly.”

A bright spot for MHS, however, lied in senior Madison Mittie. She logged 12 of her team’s 25 points.

“We usually hit more of our shots from the outside,” Mittie said. “But this game, they just weren’t falling, and we couldn’t make an adjustment to drive, because [Brown] would block them. So we just relied on our outside shooting.”

Derby built up a sizeable lead late, but the Lady Indians went stride-for-stride with the now-19-3 Lady Panthers early. Mittie posted a quick five points in the first, and MHS trailed 12-9 after the first frame.

The first frame, however, is when McAtee picked up her second foul, sidelining her until the final two minutes of the half.

By then, Derby had snagged separation. Manhattan hung with Derby, at 14-13, but from there, the Lady Panthers posted seven unanswered points.

Derby entered halftime with a 21-13 advantage.

Mittie and McAtee, though, opened the third with back-to-back buckets to pull their team back within 21-18. It appeared as though Manhattan had solved their offensive woes.

The problem for MHS, though, was that those were its only baskets of the quarter.

Derby rode out the frame on a 5-0 spurt, and though the Lady Indians trailed by a manageable 10 with three minutes to play in the fourth, the offensive dry spell doomed Manhattan and its season.

Looking back on the season, McAtee was pleased, as the Lady Indians consistently played three to four freshmen per game and relied on them on both ends of the court.

“There were some games that were close, and I think that was, honestly, due to [inexperience],” McAtee said. “I’m looking forward to next year, because we have that experience, and it would have been nice to go to state and for them to see that and have that game. But now they’ve played in a sub-state game, and I think that’ll help in the long run.”

For Mittie, a senior, though, her high school career is finished after two years at MHS. She said she enjoyed her time in the navy and red.

“I’m really thankful to be a part of it the last two years. We’ve had awesome teams both years,” Mittie said. “It’s sad that it’s over, but we were a really young team this year, and they have a really bright future.”