Savages fall to Albia in home opener

SIGOURNEY – Ultimately a slow start to the season is what doomed them the most. 

In their season opening game the Sigourney Savages girls basketball team fell 61-43 to Albia. A lot of the damage that the Lady Dees did came in the first half. 

Not just the first half, but the first few minutes of the game. Albia started off the game displaying some of their perimeter shooting. Their first two baskets were from long range, and with that came the confidence to keep shooting. 

That confidence on offense seemed to lead to other confident areas for the Lady Dees as well. They debuted a full court pressure defense on the Savages, which seemed to put Sigourney in more bad situations than good. 

“I had to adjust putting girls in the middle and moving them around more,” said Sigourney head coach Kaylee Weber said. “I had to make sure girls weren’t getting stuck in the dead zones, or the trap zones, that Albia was setting up. That killed us.” 

Almost immediately Albia was able to open up the game with an 11-point lead. Sigourney was struggling to move the ball down the court, often dribbling into a double team, or getting trapped in a must-pass situation, when all the lanes to pass the ball were clogged. 

For the Savages one more thing that seemed to harm them was their inability to keep Albia from getting first half rebounds. 

That is one thing that Weber wants the team to work on and improve on for the season. 

“The girls really need to work on boxing out a lot more,” Weber said. “I screamed at them to box out tonight. That’s the biggest thing that killed us tonight, was not letting Albia get extra possessions off an offensive rebound. (Albia) were taller, but we can’t make excuses, we need to box out better to get those rebounds.”

After the first quarter the Savages trailed by 11. In the second quarter the Savages were only able to score five points, which sent them to halftime trailing by 19 points, 38-19. 

“We had to come out in the second half and switch up our offense,” Weber said. “Clearly the offense that we had been running wasn’t working. I needed to identify that sooner, and that is completely on me, not on our players. We also had a lot of silly turnovers, we didn’t do a great job of boxing out tonight. We have stuff that we need to eliminate.”

The second half started off with a much more energetic Savages squad. 

What hadn’t been working in the first half slowly started to work in the second half. Passes were able to hit their mark. Lanes on the court opened up. Best of all Sigourney was able to match a shooting pace with the Lady Dees. 

Although the score remained in favor of Albia the small things started to add up for Sigourney as they built around themselves for the rest of the season. 

Although they trailed 50-29 after the third quarter, everything seemed to turn around for the Savages in the fourth quarter. 

Offensive strides were turned in by Sigourney in the final frame. They were able to get Albia to back off their press. The passes, and shots, continued to connect. 

The final quarter was what Weber knew the team had in them all along. 

“The fourth quarter especially the girls really pulled it together for themselves. We started to make better passes, and started to connect all around the floor much better,” Weber said. “I think we also started to play with a little bit more confidence. I feel like if we can play like we played in the fourth quarter the whole game, then we are going to have a lot better games.”

The confidence from the fourth quarter is what Sigourney is going to focus on as they take the lessons from this game and use them as they continue to build on themselves for the rest of the season. 

“A lot of the things that we should have done in the first half, that is on me,” Weber said. “I take full credit for this loss.”

The Savages were able to work on some things over the Thanksgiving break. They returned to action on Tuesday night when they traveled to Keota to start their conference schedule.