Meadow Heights girls defeat Jackson for win No. 19

Heather Dietiker drained a pair of 3-pointers early in the third quarter to ignite the Meadow Heights offense.

The Panthers then relied on a choking defense to smother host Jackson's offense in the third quarter to help build a double-digit lead and pull away for a convincing 69-52 victory Thursday.

Meadow Heights only allowed two points in the third quarter to open a 16-point lead entering the final quarter.

"We talked in the locker room at the half and just said we have to come out harder than we did the first," Meadow Heights junior Whitney Welker said. "We got to lay it all out there on the line and just dominate."

The Indians went 1 of 12 (8 percent) from the field in the third quarter.

The Meadow Heights bench reacts to a basket during the second quarter of a game on Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011, in Jackson. Meadow Heights won 69-52. (Kristin Eberts)

"We just wanted to execute the same thing we did in the first half -- just be patient and take what you get," Panthers coach Mitch Nanney said. "Defensively, make them hurt us from the outside. We really wanted to force them to shoot the ball from deep, keep them out of the gaps and play behind their post players."

The Panthers' defense suffocated the Indians' inside game. Jackson junior Connor King enjoyed a four-inch advantage on Meadow Heights' two post players, but Meadow Heights never allowed King to find her rhythm.

"The biggest thing we were doing was playing right behind her, keep her off the block and out of the comfort zone," Nanney said. "We did not want to get her heading toward the basket with any kind of catches. We did not want her to get to the offensive boards."

King finished with seven points on 3 of 13 shooting.

"They would double down on her then obviously she didn't draw the foul," Jackson coach Sheila Haertling said. "When she didn't draw the foul, she wasn't able to put it in."

Meadow Heights' Gina Cureton goes in for a layup during the fourth quarter Thursday in Jackson.

Nanney credited senior Erin Bollmann for slowing down King.

"She's got long arms, a huge wingspan," Nanney said about Bollmann. "We just want her to be behind her, bother all of her shots, hands up and block out. Make her make post moves to score on us."

Meadow Heights (19-3) pushed its lead to 50-30 with 6 minutes, 37 seconds left in the game on a 3-pointer by Hattie Cook, which worked the Panthers faithful into a frenzy.

"No matter what's going on everywhere else, we're just focused on the floor," Welker said.

The Indians (17-6) tried to rally with some long-distance shooting, and even closed the gap to 11 points on a 3-pointer from Dru Haertling. But the Panthers quelled the rally from the free-throw line. They went 14 of 23 (61 percent) from the line in the final quarter.

The Meadow Heights bench reacts to a basket during Thursday's game in Jackson.

Meadow Heights ended up shooting 57 percent (21 of 37) from the field in the contest and at least 60 percent in every quarter except the third.

"Instead of catching the ball and being scared to shoot, we just catch and shoot, we're pretty accurate on that," Cook said.

The victory helped erase some of the bad taste from the Panthers' 58-54 loss to Dexter last week. Meadow Heights, which is ranked No. 3 in the latest state Class 2 poll, hopes to build off Thursday's lopsided win over a Class 5 program.

"This is a very big win for us coming off a loss from Dexter last week," Welker said. "We just said we need to have a good game tonight because we are capable of doing this."

The loss ended Jackson's regular season. It now switches its attention to the Class 5 District 1 tournament, which it opens Tuesday against Northwest at 7:30 p.m. at Central.

"We're not really focusing on the fact that we lost," coach Haertling said. "We're going to focus on the things that we didn't do well that we need to do better."

Meadow Hts 13 19 12 25 -- 69

Jackson 15 11 2 24 -- 52

MEADOW HEIGHTS (69) -- Gina Cureton 12, Whitney Welker 16, Hattie Cook 9, Heather Dietiker 19, Erin Bollmann 9, Jillian Mills 2, Mica Morse 2. FG 21, FT 20-31, F 11. (3-pointers: Cook 2, Dietiker 5. Fouled out: none)

JACKSON (52) -- Connor King 7, Dru Haertling 12, Brooke Sanders 8, Makenzie Quade 14, Kylie Seyer 4, Danielle Daume 7. FG 19, FT 9-11, F 27. (3-pointers: Daume 1, Quade 2, Haertling 2. Fouled out: Quade, Seyer, Sanders)