By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
The Southeast of Saline girls basketball team took care of business in the opening round of the sub-state tournament defeating Lyons by a final score of 51-25.
The Lady Lions wrap up their 2021-22 campaign at 6-15 while the Lady Trojans will advance to the sub-state semis for a third meeting with Beloit.
While Lyons was outclassed on paper, the Lions came out and battled for the full 32 minutes, something that has become a hallmark of their program.
“We knew that they were going to come out to play for four quarters,” Shauna Smith said. “We knew this game wasn’t over at halftime and we just needed to settle down. You wouldn’t have known that we were winning in that locker room.”
Lyons succeeded in muddying the waters early, trailing just 8-6 after a quarter, but SES pulled away sharply in the second half en route to a convincing quarterfinal victory.
“They gamble a lot in passing lanes and that gave us some problems early but we were able to expose that later on,” Smith said. “I thought we did a really good job of playing in the short corner tonight.”
The Lady Trojans were led by Mallorie Pearson and Lexi Jacobson who tallied 12 and 10 respectively among ten scorers for SES.
Despite the size of Lyons, Southeast was able to repeatedly drive the lane and finish strong for easy buckets around the cup.
“Every day in practice we’ve worked on finishing at the rim,” she said. “We can’t settle for four-foot jumpers and I thought in the second half we did a much better job of getting to the rim.”
The Lady Trojans will now turn their attention to a Beloit team that they defeated 54-47 and 59-51 earlier this year.
“You never want to play somebody three times and they played us close in both games,” Smith said. “They know us inside and out but that goes both ways and I know it won’t take anything to get the girls fired up to play that game.”
The sub-state semifinal is set for Friday evening at Minneapolis High School with the winner advancing to play Smoky Valley or Riley County for a ticket to state.
For continuing coverage of both SES basketball teams throughout sub-state stay tuned to the Salina Post.