McAlester girls basketball nearly dug itself out of a hole against Pryor Friday.
The Lady Buffaloes fell to the Lady Tigers 50-40 despite McAlester trailing by 21 at halftime.
The Lady Buffalo offense was stagnant in the first quarter, scoring only four points to the Lady Tigers’ 11. That trend continued into the second stanza.
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Pryor ballooned the lead to 32-11 by the halftime break with a 21-point second period scoring.
Coach Kourtnee Beshears says her team’s defensive game didn’t reach its potential in the first half.
“I’m big defensively so I’m always preaching that,” Beshears said. “And sadly I feel like we weren’t super physical in the first half. I feel like they just kind of did whatever they wanted with us.”
The game became more physical in the second half.
McAlester outscored Pryor 11-9 in the third quarter, marking a change in the trend of the game. The Lady Buffaloes secured steals and turned them into transition buckets.
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Momentum carried into the fourth quarter which saw the Lady Buffaloes score 18 to the Lady Tigers’ nine. Though the deficit had been cut, it wasn’t enough to complete the comeback.
Beshears said she would have liked to see the second half effort from the opening tip instead of later in the game.
“If we would come out the gate and just do what we’re supposed to do, then we don’t have to almost do double the work to try to close the deficit to pull the win out,” Beshears said.
Kambree Zummer led the team in scoring with 21 points. Rylan Lesnau scored 13 points and Mylah Cole scored five.
Now that the Christmas break is here, the Lady Buffaloes will focus on getting better.
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Beshears said she’ll make her team run a lot over the break in hopes they’ll learn to give a more consistent effort throughout the upcoming games.
“We definitely hope to get better and hope to clean up some of that sloppiness that we’ve seen that’s really cost us some big games,” Beshears said.
McAlester plays again 6:30 p.m. Jan. 5 against Broken Bow at home.
