Lady Bobcats shake off loss

By Scott Loftis

SLoftis@CarrollCoNews.com

The Berryville Lady Bobcats don’t shy away from playing quality basketball teams. They don’t always win, but coach Daniel Cornelison says his team can learn from that kind of game.

With that in mind, Cornelison hopes the Lady Bobcats’ 54-39 loss to Reeds Spring, Mo., in the championship game of the Blue Eye Invitational on Friday, Dec. 5, will eventually help them become a better team.

“Reed’s a pretty good basketball team,” Cornelison said. “They’re real athletic, real physical. They rebound the basketball really well and they guard real well — which was what we need. It was a team that we needed to play and we need to play better to beat a team like that. You want to play good teams. We definitely want to win a few of them but when you lose a tough one like that, you’ve got to evaluate and get better.”

The loss didn’t linger for the Lady Bobcats, who were back on the court two nights later for a 60-34 victory over Omaha in the first round of the Green Forest holiday tournament. Berryville outscored Omaha 36-15 in the second half.

“We had a nice bounce-back win against Omaha,” Cornelison said. “We played a really good second half. We played a really good first half, honestly. The ball just didn’t go in the hole the first half. The second half, the ball went in the hole and life’s a lot easier.”

Senior Hailey Howerton scored 13 of her game-high 19 points in the third quarter against Omaha, including three three-pointers. Classmate Chaney Fairweather added 15 points. Fairweather led the Lady Bobcats with 17 in the loss to Reeds Spring.

Berryville will play 4A-1 conference rival Huntsville in the semifinals of the Green Forest tournament at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 11. The third-place and championship games will be played Saturday, Dec. 13.