Lady Wildcats Basketball Suffers Tough Night At Francis Howell Central

Slow starts haven’t really been a problem for the girls varsity basketball team this season.

Showing up ready to play and executing their offensive and defensive schemes properly from the opening tip has been an almost every night occurrence for the Lady Wildcats.

But on Tuesday night at Francis Howell Central High, Hazelwood West got off to a poor start, fell behind quickly, and never really recovered in a 76-57 loss to the Lady Spartans.

“I don’t think the score really reflects how close the game was,” West girls head basketball coach Jim Fleming said. “It looks like it was a blowout, but I thought we fought hard and came back hard.

"Things just snowballed in the fourth quarter, it got ugly.”

Howell Central led by 11 points heading into the fourth quarter, but pushed its lead to as much as 22 points before finally securing the 19-point win.

West senior guard Shakaunna Oliver-Futrell scored a game-high 20 points, surpassing the 1,000-point mark in her career. But she wasn’t her usual dynamic self, as Howell Central employed a ‘box-and-one’ defense to slow her, where four defenders played zone, while one other defender played tight man against Oliver-Futrell.

“It’s the first time we got ‘box-and-one’,” Fleming said. “So it’s the first time she’s seen that all year, and the first time everybody else has seen that, so I think everybody was kinda standing around saying, 'well, what do we do now?'"

Oliver-Futrell had only four points in the first half, when the Howell Central defense seemed to really confuse her. Fleming said they made some adjustments to get the team going in the second quarter.

“Finally, she realized that she could just penetrate around them, then it’d be like playing against a regular zone,” Fleming said. “We were able to come back at them a little bit.

"We fought back nicely, but then they knocked down a couple of big shots that put them up big again, and that was it.”

With Oliver-Futrell not able to find her shots like usual, Howell Central post players Brea Gegg and Sharese Jones were able to control the game for the Lady Spartans.

Gegg had a career-high 20 points and nine rebounds, while Jones contributed 16 points and 11 rebounds, as Howell Central (13-5) picked up its seventh straight win.

West junior guard Mia Williams had 12 points, and senior center Chanel Gwynn-Williams added eight points, 17 rebounds, and six blocked shots, as the Lady Wildcats lost for just the second time in their last 10 games.

Hazelwood West is now 10-4 on the season, and will have a full week off before its next game, which will be Tuesday, Feb. 1, when the Lady Wildcats will host Parkway Central. The junior varsity teams will play at 5:30 p.m., with the varsity teams to follow at 7 p.m.