Tigers host Black Bears for final game of semester

By Everett Brazil, III

The Newkirk Herald Journal

NEWKIRK — The Newkirk Tigers and Lady Tigers welcomed the Pawnee Black Bears for the final game of the fall semester.

The Lady Tigers junior varsity team opened at 5 p.m., and would ultimately fall 33 – 10. There was no Tiger junior varsity team, so the game moved straight into the Lady Tigers varsity game.

The Lady Tigers played hard, but would ultimately succumb to Pawnee 40 – 19.

“We didn’t play real well, but we were down Kyson Vap. She our starting point guard, and that hurt us,” said Coach Megan Schieber.

Schieber said the defense worked okay, but needed improvement,
“We had a decent defense. Our game plan was to have a lot of ball pressure, and we didn’t execute it that well,” she said. “There are a lot of things we can get and we did a better job rebounding.”

The offense was also difficult against Pawnee.

“We struggled, we just couldn’t get the ball to go in the hole, and we weren’t really taking great shots, either,” she said. “We had the opportunity to score, we just couldn’t execute.”

She added that they held onto the ball better.

“We had only 12 turnovers this game, which is great. We had open shots,” she said.

Schieber is confident they will improve during the Christmas break.

“We have a lot of work to do, but the good news is we have Christmas Break, so hopefully we can get it ironed out for the second half of the season,” she said.

The Tigers had better luck, winning over the Black Bears  60 – 51.

“We started offensively really hot,” said Coach Mark Huster. “I think we had our biggest lead of 16 in the second quarter, and we were up 8 at half.”

The offense was strong he said, as they made many shots throughout the game.

“We shot the ball really well. This is the first time we beat Pawnee since I’ve been here, about seven years,” Huster said.

The Tigers’ success was partly due to a weak Black Bears team.

“They lost quite a lot from last year’s team. They are not as good as last year, and they are really young,” he said.

That doesn’t mean that Newkirk didn’t have their own struggles.

“Defensively, it looked pretty good. We had some let downs, we didn’t block out very well,” he said. “We have to do better job blocking out, keeping our feet moving,” he said.

Newkirk travels to Chisolm to take on the Longhorns Jan. 4.