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Perryville girls’ hounding defense propels Pirates to FSCB Holiday Classic fifth-place title
It took no time whatsoever for Perryville to jump out to a big lead on Friday night, pounding the rock early and putting away the sixth-seeded Cape Central Tigers in a 42-32 First State Community Bank Holiday Classic fifth-place championship victory.
Holding the Tigers to single digits in the first half, it didn’t take long until sophomore Aby Amberger and the rest of the Pirates took advantage, breaking out of an early scoring slump to hound Cape Central.
Seeded eighth, their run at gold ended sooner than they may have liked, but it’s still a magnificent finish for a Pirates team that is, more than anything, young and still looking to make its mark.
“I think our defense was what really got us going here tonight,” Pirates coach Jason Dreyer said. “Our goal was to keep Cape Central out of the lane, and I felt like, in the first half especially, we did a really good job of that.”
Having battled through injuries and a loaded front-end schedule here early this season, Perryville’s seen all kinds of adversity but emerges with a fifth-place title in a heavy FSCB tourney load this season.
“Our goal coming into the tournament was to get a plaque,” Dreyer said. “Tonight was our sixth game in nine days, and we've been dealing with some injuries and some sicknesses here this last week, too.
“We've really only been playing six girls this entire week, so I know that they're exhausted. I just asked them tonight to give us everything that they have.”
That they did, holding Central to its lowest scoring output of the season with just 32 points allowed against a competitive and deep SEMO Conference side.
On the other side of the floor, with sixth-seeded Cape Central dropping a game that it was never overly competitive in, the message isn’t harsh following a disappointing Holiday Classic finale.
“I wouldn't say I'm overly disappointed,” Tigers coach Sommer McCauley-Perdue said. ”I went into this being optimistic, and just like I said at the beginning of the year, it’s not about the wins, it's just about us progressing and getting better.
“I think we definitely saw different things that we did get better, we just couldn't push it out how we wanted it to. I'm still proud of what the girls have achieved.”
Perryville betters its yearly record to 4-5, rebounding from a Thursday night loss to Festus with a monster victory over the Class 5 Tigers of Cape Central, perhaps its most impressive victory of the season so far.
Aby Amberger led the charge with 24 points for Perryville, with Madeleine Gremaud’s 9 pacing her. Amberger hit two of the Pirates’ three 3-pointers in the win.
Cape Central, on the other hand, drops to 4-5 for the year, an identical record to Perryville, going on a nice tournament run with victories over ninth-place Chester and a strong Saxony Lutheran team but falling flat in the fifth-place final.
Sa’Mya Torres led Cape Central with 10 points in the loss, going 4-for-5 at the free-throw line. Jamie Dawson-Ide’s 9 points placed second, being a regular fixture in the scoring column for Central this tournament.
Though Dawson-Ide’s led the squad well this tournament, she’s one of many players that McCauley-Perdue’s placed leadership expectations upon, as she looks to build the depth of the team.
Her vision for Cape Central is to form a committee in which one player no longer has to lead the squad, which is certainly a formula for future success as the Tigers enter conference play.
“I think we’ve progressed a lot as far as our ethic, our defense and just being a real rounded team,” McCauley-Perdue said.
“We're not looking at certain people to score, we’re building other people to be scorers. We’re looking for others to push one another to help each other out.”