The Franklin girls basketball team attempted 28 field goals and turned the ball over 21 times Tuesday night.
Hardly recipes for success.
Yet by holding visiting Bloomington South to some icy shooting of its own, the Grizzly Cubs were able to break free from a halftime tie to score a 37-24 victory.
It marked the third win in as many tries for Franklin in a series started the 2014-15 season. With a 10-7 record, the Cubs have achieved a double-digit win total for only the second time in five years.
Getting there wasn’t pretty by any stretch.
“This isn’t our normal pace. This isn’t our normal style. We just felt when we watched film on them and when we watched them live that we could use our match-up (zone) to really bother them,” Franklin coach Josh Sabol said.
“It was an ugly, slow, grind-it-out, hard-to-watch type game. But you’ve got to be able to win a variety of ways, and I thought we did that tonight.”
Bloomington South (7-7) struggled badly from the floor, converting 9 of 37 field goal attempts (.243). The Panthers only managed 4-of-11 free throw accuracy.
Franklin senior guard Delanie Hill led all scorers with 13 points; forward Allison Barnard and junior guard Sarah Sullivan each added eight with 6-foot junior Maya Elliott coming off the bench to provide a team-high six rebounds.
The Panthers’ top scorers were senior guard Paige Gehlhausen and junior guard Lauren Leal with seven points apiece.
“When you play matchup zone, a lot of time the other team is taking 40 seconds to 60 seconds to get a shot off,” Sabol said. “What that does is hurt you on the offensive end. Obviously, we would like to maximize our possessions and get a lot of shots.
“We just weren’t able to do that tonight. Mainly because they were taking 40 to 60 seconds.”
The teams combined to make 9 of 32 field goals and commit 21 turnovers in the opening half.
Understandably, it ended in a 14-14 tie.
At 6:05 of the second quarter, South’s Marina Blackwell knocked down a ‘3’ to put the Panthers ahead, 11-8. Sullivan answered with a runner off the glass for the Grizzly Cubs, followed by four consecutive Franklin free throws.
Gehlhausen made a triple of her own to account for the halftime score.
Franklin takes its 2-1 Mid-State Conference on the road Friday at Mooresville. The Panthers are off until hosting Franklin Central at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday.
