 |
| United High School outside of Monmouth |
Abingdon vs. West Prairie (Girl's Basketball)
Class 1A Regional (@ United)
(2/7/11)
This game was broadcast on IHSSN.net. It would have been carried on 97.7 WMOI like the previous game, however there was a Monmouth-Roseville girl's basketball game from Farmington that followed our West Central coverage.
The last Abingdon game I broadcasted was a makeup game against Elmwood recently. From tip off to the final buzzer, the game lasted 56 minutes. The Commandos play a really, really slow tempo game, and they do it quite well. In fact, Abingdon did this to South Fulton, a team getting recognition throughout the year in both the AP and IHSSN Coaches Polls. Coach Roger Thurman joined us on the halftime show of the B-PCA/West Central game and gave us a recap of that game against South Fulton on Saturday.
Abingdon came out and did their thing, leading 9-1 at the end of the first quarter. The West Prairie Cyclones didn't knock down their first field goal until the 1:18 mark of the 2nd quarter. It was 17-3 at halftime. Yes, at halftime!
There were only two turnovers committed by the Commandos, while they forced the Cyclones into eight. The final play of the 2nd quarter resulted in injury for Abingdon's Allyson Cordle. I didn't see what exactly happened, but she was laying in the floor in extreme pain as the halftime buzzer sounded.
The coaching staff came over to tend to her, and she was moved to the first row of bleachers with her right leg propped up. Administrators at United grabbed ice, and Cordle spent the rest of halftime and the second half on the bleachers with the leg propped and iced.
Just like the last broadcast, it seemed like this was going to be a swift game. The entire first half was 22 minutes. There were two 0:30 timeouts called in the first two quarters, and a total of 10 turnovers. Only three fouls were whistled in the first half, however all three were shooting fouls.
West Prairie pressured the perimeter more in the second half, and the game certainly did end in less than an hour. The second half may have lasted twice as long as the first half.
Tale of the Tape (1st half/2nd half)
1st Half
Turnovers: 10
Fouls: 4
Timeouts: 2
Free Throw Attempts: 6
2nd Half
Turnovers: 11
Fouls: 15
Timeouts: 4
Free Throw Attempts: 19
Abingdon took a 28-11 lead after three quarters, but the Cyclones fought back in the 4th quarter. Trailing by 17 points to start the 4th quarter, the Commandos cut that deficit down to 8 points down the stretch with chances to close even further.
The Commandos went just 4-11 from the free throw line in the 4th quarter, giving West Prairie more chances to get back in the game. Abingdon held on for a 36-28 win, and will move on to play host and #2 seed United on Wednesday night.
Cordan "Beep" Jones scored a game-high 12 points for Abingdon. Erica Webster reached double-digits for West Prairie, scoring 10 points. The Cyclones dressed just eight players. They had three seniors, three juniors, one sophomore, and one freshman.
There were 65 fans left in the stands at the final horn.
The gym capacity at United High School is 1,160.
After the game, Abingdon Athletic Director Joe Nichols came up to the broadcast booth. Knowing Joe for the last several years as the Abingdon baseball coach, and the B-PC/A assistant baseball coach before that, I forgot that I first knew him as a photographer for area newspapers. He told me that when he was taking photos for the Western Courier at WIU, a professor had talked about writing a coffee table book on old gymnasiums. He wanted Joe to take pictures of the old gyms, and the professor would write articles on each gym. This would be a really neat idea. Nichols said the professor was just interested in the really old turn-of-the-century gyms. I think it would be neat for all gyms, take for example the Benton gymnasium which was built in the 1970's, it's a classic.
Game 124 Miles: 40
No comments:
Post a Comment