VERSAILLES – The Versailles Lady Tigers defeated the visiting Marion Local Lady Flyers 55-44 in Saturday action.
“Our girls locked in and played as a team for four quarters,” said Versailles coach, Tracy White. “It was four quarters just a straight-out battle and it’s the whole length of the court, the backcourt, the frontcourt.”
The MAC teams battled to a 17-15 Versailles lead after one-quarter of play with Jenna Dirksen leading the Lady Tigers with 7 points including her first of two 3-pointers.
“Jenna has been a leader and she’s been on the floor for a few years now,” White noted. “She’s a three-dimensional player, she works hard at basketball and she’s a good leader on and off the court. It’s nice that she got in a groove and was able to get things to fall tonight. She attacked the basket well, she shot the ball well and everybody around her capitalized on that as well.”
Versailles was again two points better than the Lady Flyers in period No. 2 by a 13-11 count sending the teams to the break with the Lady Tigers owning a 30-26 advantage. Versailles had five in the scoring column led by four Taylor Wagner points.
Marion Local would not score a field goal in the third period while Versailles was denting the board for 15 points. Marion Local went 5-6 at the line to make it a double-digit 45-31 Lady Tigers lead with a quarter to play. Katy Litten drained two treys to lead Versailles with 6 third-quarter points.
“Our defensive intensity turned it up a level,” said White. “I felt like we were all communicating, we were rotating, when you can do that and you can click as a team on defense it’s hard for offenses to be successful.”
Marion Local canned three triples in the fourth, a two-point basket, and 2-2 at the line only to come up short in its attempt at a comeback while Versailles was scoring 10 fourth-quarter points to earn an 11-point win.
The two teams were a combined 22-23 at the charity stripe on the day good for 95.6 percent shooting. Versailles was a perfect 13-13 and the Lady Flyers went 9-10 at the free throw line.
“It’s a free open shot,” Coach White stated. “It is something we have improved on and it comes up big in games like this when it’s a dogfight.”
“We stress assists, we stress deflections, defensive rotations, charges, and things like that that technically win the game,” White said. “I get it, scoring wins the game but there are a lot of things that go on that go unnoticed in our stat columns that win games. We had so many people step up in different ways. Our bench was in it as well and it was an overall team win.”
Jenna Dirksen led Versailles and all scorers with a game high 17 points.
BOXSCORE:
VERSAILLES 55, MARION LOCAL 44
VERSAILLES – J. Dirksen 17, K. Litten 14, T. Wagner 14, S. Stammen 4, G. Osborne 4, A. Schwartz 2 – TOTALS 15 13-13 4 55
MARION LOCAL – A. Unrast 14, M. Eckstein 9, A. Winner 6, A. Dirksen 6, N. Eckstein 5, K. Ashman 4 – TOTALS 7 9-10 7 44
3-POINTERS
Versailles 4 (J. Dirksen 2, K. Litten 2)
Marion Local 7 (A. Unrast 2, A. Winner 2, K. Ashman1, N. Eckstein 1, M. Eckstein 1)
SCORE by QUARTERS
17-13-15-10 55 Versailles
15-11-05-13 44 Marion Local
