Lady Panthers fall to Ware County in final minutes of Region 1-4A consolation game

WARNER ROBINS — It was a close one, as it has been all year when Perry (8-16) plays Ware County (10-14), but the Lady Panthers fell again in the Region 1-4A tournament with a 44-39 final.

Perry’s Cam McKenzie broke the early stalemate with a triple three minutes into the game, and the Lady Panthers executed a 6-2 run to get past the halfway point of the opening period.

The key was generating quality shots with (some) consistency. Instead of opting for early threes or jumpers off the dribble early in the shot clock, Perry put pressure on the paint and tried to work the ball around the defense.

But, much like their previous matchup against the Lady Gators, the offense froze up.

After taking a 9-2 lead with 3:37 left in the first, the Lady Panthers only scored five points for the next 6.5 minutes. In that time Ware County came within six points, and in the ensuing three minutes got off an 8-4 run to cut their deficit to two.

Forcing turnovers and jump balls helped the Lady Panthers get ahead 23-18 at the break, but that didn’t last.

“When we’re taking care of the ball we’re getting pretty good shots, and then when we get posed up we do a lot of dribbling or make bad passes,” Head coach Austin McIntyre said on the key to consistent offensive performance. “We talk about that, we know what quality shots are. It’s just being able to take that and translate it into the game. We’re really trying to increase our basketball IQ and learn your first shot is not always your best shot.”

Perry held on to the lead through the third quarter , but that wasn’t without the lead exchanging hands multiple times in the eight minutes.

Ware County took their first lead of the night 26-24 with 4:12 to go in the third, and again with 1:54 on the clock as a part of their 10-3 run.

The Lady Panthers reclaimed a two-point lead before quarter’s end and even extended it to five in the first minute of the fourth, but from there they were outscored 15-5. McIntyre once again pointed to turnovers as a deciding factor.

“Just taking care of the ball. We get in these spurts where we have a lot of turnovers at a time,” McIntyre said. “Every time we have one turnover it turns into like, four more. So trying to find a way to limit turnovers, flushing the mistake and not letting it take over three, four, five more possessions.”

“You’re going to make mistakes in basketball, but our guards are just learning how to flush the mistake and then bounce back from it,” He continued. “They’re getting better at it, it’s just that and rising to the occasion.”

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“Our message we’ve had all year [is] when our guards are taking care of the ball, we’re a really good basketball team,” McIntyre said. “We were in the game with Warner Robins for a lot of time, especially in the first half…We were up on Ware [County] a lot of the time, we were up on Wayne [County] at Wayne….Our girls, they know they can compete with anybody, it’s just can we put four quarters together.