It’s no fluke

In a rematch of the Championship game of the Monroe City Tournament, the Monroe City Lady Panthers and the South Shelby Lady Birds hit the floor Wednesday night, this time with South Shelby taking over the hosting responsibilities.
Even before tip-off, Bob Gilliam and the Monroe City squad had something to prove after falling 65-34 to the Lady Birds last month, a game that was fresh on the Lady Panther’s mind.
“I think we were a little intimidated by South Shelby,” Gilliam said after the game. “They are an aggressive basketball team. They really got after it.”
The girls of South Shelby remembered that game too, and were determined to make sure that history repeated itself. They wasted no time establishing their dominance in the game, starting off the first quarter with 22 unanswered points.
The funk of such a large margin continued to haunt the Lady Panthers until Whitney Buckman drained a 3-pointer late in the first to put Monroe city on the board.
The three-point basket played a large part in the 15 points Monroe City racked up in the first half. They went on to hit two more.
The Lady Birds were not pulling any punches, as they went on in the second quarter to post another 13 points.
Though, for Gilliam, the contest was all but decided after the first six minutes of the game.
Ashley Troyer’s 17 points was a big catalyst in bringing home the win for South Shelby, but Jenna Mueller and the way that she notched her 16 points better exemplified the way the team played as a whole. Along with her six buckets from the paint, Mueller also shot 50 percent from the charity stripe, going 4-for-8 on the night.
All of these aspects of the Lady Birds’ game allowed for younger and fresher members of Milly Rash’s squad to pick roughly the last five minutes for varsity experience.
“We dressed some girls that we normally hadn’t dressed,” Rash said. “That was kind of fun that they could get in there and get a little bit of playing time too. It gives them a little more confidence.”
With this win, South Shelby moves on to Saturday’s championship game of the tournament to defend a title the team has held six of the last seven years. If the Lady Birds are able to win, they will join Monroe City as the only other team in the South Shelby tournament to win six consecutive championships.