Slow start dooms Lady Lions

The Lansing girls’ basketball team saw the underdog jump on top early in the championship of their 5A substate bracket, and the top-seeded Lions could never recover in a 56-52 loss to fourth-seeded Shawnee Heights on Saturday evening.

The Thunderbirds (now 9-12) had the lead by the time the crowd at Topeka Highland Park High School had settled into their seats, and they never let it go. They scored the first eight points of the contest and had a commanding 24-11 lead after a putback by Cierra Ceazer with three minutes, 25 seconds left in the first half.

Lansing (19-3) fought back and got the lead down to as little as three points, but Shawnee Heights held on and ended the Lions’ 17-game winning streak. The T-Birds, meanwhile, will carry a five-game winning streak into the 5A state tournament after losing nine games in a row during their 1-9 start to the season.

“They came in playing well, and they’re an experienced program,” Lansing head coach Keith Andrews said. “(It was) frustrating for us. We wanted to get back (to state for the second straight year), but if it was easy everybody would do it. ... Real hard to end the season that way ... but a great season all the way.”

Lansing’s Katie Delich scored 18 points to lead all scorers, and teammate Amy Briggs added 17 points with a trio of 3-pointers, but they couldn’t get going early. Andrews said it was huge for Shawnee Heights, as the underdogs, to get out to a good start, and they did so with suffocating defense, holding Lansing to 34 percent (19-for-56) from the field after the Lions had entered the game shooting 47 percent from the field and 41 percent from the 3-point line this season.

“We were a little tentative ... and their go-to player (Ceazer) got a couple rebounds and hit a couple shots (early),” Andrews said. "After the first quarter, I thought Katie was real solid. ... She figured out (the way) the game was going to be. ... They played everybody straight up and (Sheylon Rice) was a 5’2” guard that stayed with (Briggs) and made her work for everything she got.”

Facing a huge deficit, Andrews said it was important to start cutting the lead down before halftime. They did just that, scoring the final five points of the first half to head to the locker room down just eight.

“We told the girls we want to cut it down in chunks...” Andrews said. “And (we were) fortunate enough to get those five straight points.”

Shawnee Heights pushed the lead back out to 34-22 with 3:43 left in the third quarter on a 3-pointer by Cassidy Downing, but the Lions — ranked No. 6 in the state in 5A heading into the postseason — had one last push in them. Helped by Gabby Hacker’s quartet of second-half points, they cut the lead back into single digits and made it 49-45 on a bucket by Delich with 1:03 left in the game.

The T-Birds were solid from the free-throw line down the stretch, though, and made four of them in a row to move back ahead by eight and put the game away. Erin Maxwell finished with 17 points to lead them, and their lone senior — Lauren Alumbaugh — came off the bench to score 11, seven of which were in the second half.

Saturday marked the final games for Lansing seniors Katelyn Griffen, Abbey Lozenski, and Briggs. Andrews has sung the praises of the seniors throughout the year, and Saturday was no exception even regarding things that don’t appear in the box score. He said Griffen stepped up defensively, for example, to hold Ceazer in check after she started the game strong.

“Katelyn did a real good job defensively, we just needed a few kids to make shots, and we didn’t have that,” Andrews said. “Whatever shortcomings we had were exposed in the first half ... but I think if we made one or two shots early it would’ve been a different game.”

Griffen had seven points and Lansing’s other 3-pointer, and Allison Ewing had six points to go with her 10 rebounds.

On the other half of the bracket, second-seeded Topeka Seaman (16-6) beat sixth-seeded Highland Park (7-15) 53-46 to punch their ticket to state on Saturday. Seaman and Shawnee Heights will be among the eight teams at the state tournament re-seeded based on winning percentage this season.