Gilman City Invitational Tournament

The young and hungry North Daviess Lady Knights nearly ran the table in last week’s Gilman City Invitational Basketball Tournament but Worth County plucked the championship out of their grasp with a 39-38 victory in Saturday night’s title game.

North Daviess entered the tournament as the #5 seed but advanced to the championship game with a 47-43 win over #4 Cainsville and huge 45-39 uspet of top-seeded Gilman City Lady Hawks on their own floor in the semifinal round.

“They’ve always been an obstacle for us,” said North Daviess girls coach Alan Koch of the Lady Hawks. “I had never beaten them before,” he added. “We really outplayed them. Our interior defensive was just excellent and we controlled their guards a little bit.”

Junior post player Lindsay Hunter scored 23 points to lead the Lady Knights against Gilman. Freshman Mandy Williams added 7 points.

It is believed that the Lady Knights’ championship appearance against Worth County was the first by a North Daviess girls team since the district consolidated 10 years ago. North Daviess led throughout the late stages of the game, until 15 seconds left when a Lady Tiger made a front end foul shot, missed the second and Worth County controlled the long rebound and scored to go up by one point. North Daviess called time out to set up a final play. The game boiled down to a pair of missed free throws with 4 seconds remaining.

“We had our chances,” Coach Koch admits, “but a lot of people didn’t even think we’d be there in the first place.”

Hunter and junior classmate Darcy Iddings led the Lady Knights with 10 points each. Freshmen Lindsay Ray and Mandy Williams contributed 9 and 7 points, respectively.

Iddings canned 17 points and Williams added 15 in Monday’s opening round victory over Cainsville.

The Lady Knights entered Tuesday night’s HDC contest with Ridgeway with an 8-8 overall record and 3-4 slate in the conference. North Daviess returns to Gilman City Friday night for the final game of the HDC schedule. A pair of league victories would give the Lady Knights just their 2nd winning record in conference play since the 1985-86 season.

North Daviess is the #4 seed in the HDC Tournament, which tips off next Monday night at Tri-County High School. The Lady Knights again face Cainsville in the opener.

All 5 Lady Knight starters will return next season. Coach Koch believes that his girls’ appearance in last fall’s 1A state softball playoffs is still paying dividends.

“One of the keys to this whole thing was our success in the softball season,” said Coach Koch. “I think that kind of carried over to our basketball season. The girls found out they can be competitive,” he added. “We’ve lost several one point ballgames and the most we’ve been beaten by is eleven. One of our goals was not to have any blowouts like in the past.”