The Knoxville Basketball Squads made the trip to Wells Fargo Arena on Saturday to take on Newton, and the Panthers came away with a split with the girls falling 53-17 and the boys winning a hard fought rock fight 48-43 with both games live on 95.3 KNIA. The girls fell behind early and played without Coach Matt Ritchhart, who was serving a one game suspension for being ejected in Friday night’s loss to Pella. Assistant Coach Chris Peden stepped in as acting coach and told KNIA/KRLS Sports early turnovers helped dig the team into a hole they could not get out of. Hannah Dunkin scored ten of her game high 14 points in the 2nd half. The boys had to figure out a way to come down from the high of beating Pella on Friday and play Newton squads that wanted to slow the game down. While the Cardinals were successful in playing slow Knoxville was better overall at shooting the ball. The Panthers led for most of the game, but Newton grabbed the lead late in the 3rd quarter on a 9-0 run, but the Panthers tied it in the final seconds of the 3rd on a Lincoln Norris three and outscored the Cardinals 16-t11 in the final frame. Coach Joel Keady told KNIA/KRLS Sports his guys had to find a way to win the game and was happy with how they fought through their first real taste of adversity.
Keady: “Definitely wasn’t pretty and I am proud of the guys how they fought. I said last week we’ll get a stretch where we’ll face adversity, we didn’t get it last night, luckily, but we saw it tonight and we did a good job fighting through.”…