Girls Basketball: Oswego bounces back, beats Larkin

The hosts were looking to rebound in the opening game of the Oswego Holiday Classic.

The Panthers lost to crosstown rival Oswego East on Friday night, but rebounded on Saturday afternoon, dominating the boards in a 58-34 victory over Larkin.

“We lost a hard game last night and it’s always tough to come back less than 24 hours later,” Oswego coach Chad Pohlmann said. “I was really proud of the girls tonight. This was a good win.”

The Panthers outrebounded the Royals 47-34. Erin Sinnott and Kelsey Nelson had nine apiece to lead the winners while Caeleigh Morton chipped in with eight rebounds.

“We’ve been focusing a lot on rebounding because when we go against smaller teams we know how big of an advantage it is for us,” Sinnott said. “We really worked hard boxing out to get those rebounds because we wanted to win the rebounding war.”

Oswego (4-5) led 31-19 at halftime, but saw Larkin chip away, cutting the lead to 35-28 midway through the third quarter on a layup by senior Jill Casebeer.

“We tried to convince them to come out hard those first few minutes of the second half and put the heat on,” Larkin coach Tissanie Simmons said. “Sometimes we get too excited and kind of lose our focus a bit.”

Despite Morton heading to the bench with her fourth foul and 6:00 remaining in the third quarter, the Panthers went on a 21-1 run to take a 56-29 lead with just 3:20 left in the contest.

“We knew we had to pick up the slack from just mentally being out of it last night,” Sinnott said. “We just started playing better fundamentally and had a lot of people that needed to step up and did.”

The Panthers received strong contributions from both their starters and bench. Sinnott led the way with 14 points, Morton scored 12 points, despite playing less than half a game due to foul trouble, while Rebecca Anderson, Amy Annala and Taylor Paisley combined for 19 points and 10 rebounds off the bench.

“Caeleigh (Morton) is coming back from an injury and came out and did a nice job,” Pohlmann said. “Erin (Sinnott) had a very nice game after struggling on Friday and I told her that it’s the sign of a good player. And, the bench, Rebecca Anderson and Amy Annala, played very well.”

Larkin (1-6) was paced by Casebeer’s 12 points while Maggie Hoffman’s contributed eight points. Allison Driskill had a team-best eight rebounds.

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