SEYMOUR — The start to senior night couldn’t have gone any better for the Seymour girls basketball team on Thursday night.
Holding Hoosier Hills Conference rival Columbus East to just one field goal in the first 10 minutes and racing out to a 22-4 lead, it looked like the Owls were well on their way to sending their lone senior, Aidan Hiester, out with a victory.
Yet a second-quarter surge led by Olympian sophomore Koryn Greiwe brought them back within three at halftime and later lifted them by Seymour for a 63-41 victory.
Though the rebounding numbers and turnovers were equal through the first two periods, the Owls’ turnovers led to plenty of easy runouts for East.
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Costly fouls also put the Olympians at the line 10 times in the first half. East went 8 for 10 from the charity stripe early to help cut into the lead. Greiwe was 6 of 8 during that span.
East coach Danny Brown was proud of the way his girls fought back after absorbing the Seymour’s opening punch. He was especially pleased with his sophomore guard’s willingness to attack the basket.
“We weren’t attacking, and that’s we needed to get back to,” he said. “We weren’t attacking before when it was 20-4, but we changed up our offense and defense, and things started clicking for us.”
Greiwe led all scorers with 29 points, and once she started seeing the ball go into the bucket, it spelled doom for the Owls.
In contrast, Seymour stopped hitting its shots after playing well from the jump for the first quarter and a half. Once the Owls stopped scoring, they let up according to coach Jason Longmeier.
“When they went to the zone, we got way too passive and we weren’t as aggressive as we need to be,” he said. “They started to make shots, and you started to see our defense go down. I think for a quarter and a half, we played the best defense we could play.”
The Olympians, who shot 5 for 21 in the first half, all of a sudden couldn’t miss. Draining 3-pointers whenever they took them and getting friendly bounces from the rim after it had denied them so many times before, it seemed East could do no wrong after a half of not being able to do anything right.
Brown explained that it was a definitey tale of two halves.
“I got after them in the first quarter, as I’m sure the whole gym heard,” Brown said. “ We changed up our defense, and from the time it was 20-4, we went on to outscore them 57-21.”
Katie Dougherty added nine points for the Olympians.
